


That Lonelier Place

by gwendolynflight



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Philosophical Rambling, Road Trip, Slow Burn, Slowest Burn, Trust Issues, Wesley gets a vacation kinda, Wiping out season 4, fixit fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-09-15 08:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9227210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolynflight/pseuds/gwendolynflight
Summary: Time-travel fixit fic, of a sort. The fifth season episode “Time Bomb” featured a bit of time travel; this fic takes off from there, and asks: what if Wesley were sent back in time, and to a much earlier point? Slow burn Angel/Wes.





	1. For Hatred, Only Questions

Gunn is the only one of them who didn’t come around to threaten him or express his sense of the unforgivable, and somehow that felt like the worst sting of all. 

Angel tried to kill him, true, but really, Wes had been expecting that; in his own dim, morphine-dampened way he’d expected the pillow, the rage, the utter lack of forgiveness in spite of the soul, perhaps because of the soul. 

If Angel had been Angelus he wouldn’t have felt the betrayal so sharply, now would he. 

And Fred’s sense of betrayal he could understand, her broken faith in his abilities as an expert, his fallen professionalism as though no one had ever been fooled by a forged prophecy before. It hurt, but he understood. 

And Cordelia’s silence he’d understood since childhood, a priori, like a mathematical formula. She was like the sister he’d never had. There is no forgiveness in family. Ergo, of course she would never forgive him.

Gunn, though. 

The one face he’d expected to see when he emerged from the endless black in a world of hospital sheets and humming machinery - the one person whose forgiveness he’d never questioned his right to - had never visited. 

Neither to berate nor to show support. 

Nothing. 

Having to take a taxi back to his empty flat, lacking any name to give to the well-meaning doctor, knowing in his darkened soul that his mistaken attempt at heroics had left him with no one. 

Gunn had called him one of his own, had said _I’ve got your back _in a way that Wesley had assumed wouldn’t end. He’d seen the betrayals excused by Gunn, seen his former gang turn against him and Gunn react with a regretful frown not because he hated them but because a part of him wished he could go back. It was like instant forgiveness, it was stronger than family because Gunn had fought with these people, trained them, defended them, loved them.__

And somewhere along the line Wesley had come to believe he shared the same bond with the younger man, had come to believe that his any action would be forgiven because hadn’t Gunn forgiven so much more in the others? 

That hatred hurt worst of all, burned in him when Fred’s recriminations only stung and Cordelia’s continued silence remained expected and understood. Gunn’s hatred burrowed into the growing lonely places that seemed almost eager to fill him in the dark nights, in the space of days after his release from the hospital, perhaps not too soon if he’d anyone at home to care for him, a stretch of empty time in which he barely moved and hardly bothered eating, every action a burden because really, he’d never had anyone but these people, and he’d never had a closer friendship, and he’d been doing the right thing. 

He had thought (continued to think) he’d been doing the right thing. 

Justine’s knife beneath his skin didn’t hurt worse than the knowledge of his own failure, couldn’t possibly hurt worse than knowing it had all been a lie. It filled him, as he grew harder, and leaner, and tried his damnedest to stop caring about it all, to stop caring that even in the end, when he’d thought he was dying and thought that were he to survive they would understand, that in what he’d thought was his lowest point his only concern had been for Connor, and Angel, and his only need had been the need to explain his actions. 

In that lonelier place he could admit his arrogance, his hubris, his naïve self-assurance that of course forgiveness would come, that of course they would understand. 

That Gunn would still hold him a friend, and defend him as such. He was able to see the lies inherent in his earlier assumptions. 

Everything had seemed so much clearer then, with the protestations of friendship lying in the metaphorical dust at his feet. But then Gunn had come to him. Not for himself, or for the team, not to renew a friendship or offer forgiveness, but for Fred. 

And he thought that might have hurt worst of all. 

~~~~~~~~

His third day without sleep (he would stop counting beyond four, unable or unwilling to mark the endless stretches of time) marked the first occurrence of the dream that would become typical, common, consuming: he walks into the lobby of the hotel, looking down at a text (important in the way that dream-things are always important but likewise always unnamed and unreadable) open to a lithograph of a Kubari demon, his mouth opening to speak to Angel who is as always standing over the bassinet when he hears the noise, the wet, sticky *swallowing* noise and he frowns and looks up just in time to see Angel red-mouthed straighten up from Connor’s side, and smile.

That first time, as he had every time thereafter, Wesley bolted upright, shoving his chair back from the desk with the force of the move, eyes going wildly to the door where whatever woke him from his too-brief slumber awaits. 

That first time, it was Angel, reassuringly clean-mouthed and too late to catch Wesley’s desperate attempts to waken. Still gasping, heart beating a little too rapidly but calming, and there is a book open before him, so Angel assumed that he had been startled, and asked, “Here early, Wes?”

And fresh from the dream, the horrible prophecy-inspired dream, he simply nodded a lie. “Yes,” he breathed, mouth dry, voice low and rough with sleep. But Angel is distracted by a low cry from the bassinet in the lobby, and he just nodded, and left without hearing the rest of Wesley’s explanation. 

Once Angel’s flaring coat cleared the door, Wesley allowed his shoulders to slump, curling in with exhaustion so inborn it’s almost painful, and very casually pulled a series of manila folders atop the open book.

His first reaction had been disbelief. It was impossible, it was a mistake, he’d translated it wrong again. Then had come denial, so very like disbelief but so much more firmly-rooted, so much longer-lived, a months-long search through every tattered scrap of old parchment he could lay his hands on, months of questioning demons in back alleys and temporally shiftless bars, months of terror and secrecy and no sleep and feeding the denial like a favored pet. 

By the end of it he’d dropped thirteen pounds his already thin frame could ill afford, his flat had become a place where he stored books and clothing, little more, and even his ability to be a friend had atrophied and gone the way of his attention to food and personal hygiene. 

Already soaked in regret like old whiskey for things not yet accomplished he planned, and plotted, and caused his own ruination. 

That was the first time.

~~~~~~~~

When he left the hospital he knew it didn’t matter. Or, he left the hospital because he knew it didn’t matter. Everything spirals down into the black. Nothing matters in the black. The black is where nothing lives, alternatively. Weeks and days and long seconds passing at first with the ticking clock that he quickly destroyed with a thrown empty bottle of Wild Turkey. Vile stuff, really, went down like sugar but more importantly it was cheap and sold in quantity. 

Wound healed, became a hot gummy seam, stitches out, then a scar, red and brutal, then pink and thin-stretched like all the others. Knew he didn’t matter. Or, felt it, a body-knowledge in the death of his heart. Empty, hollow, we are the hollow men but he’d never liked Eliot, kept drinking, filling a void he didn’t want to believe in.

Beer was what you had with pizza, with friends, stout or lager or a pale ale fizzing in a frozen mug or served warm at one of the faux British pubs near his flat. 

Rum was something hidden coyly in mixed drinks, iced in the blender and served with little paper umbrellas and forced upon him by Cordelia. Gunn had never been coerced into sampling a daiquiri. 

Vodka was for dancing, for knocking back in frozen shots unmarred by ice or flavoring, for the quick rush, the instant disorientation of Grey Goose or real imported Stoli, Kremly, Thor’s Hammer, the names that roll off his tongue like old friends, the acid-wash of dizziness that precluded self-consciousness or even good sense.

Scotch was for regret, and things left unsaid, and the bitter drunkenness that ended inevitably in tears, whether his own or someone else’s. Scotch was for all night, and for blackouts that lasted days, and for that instant of complete amnesia that accompanied every hangover. 

In the four months after they left him to die, he pickled his liver. 

It seemed appropriate to no longer care. 

That was also the first time, though it counted as the second or perhaps a time in between as the entire period had been lost to magic or mercy or to that damn W&H contract. 

~~~~~~~~

It would have been better not to remember.

She would have explained that memory is nothing but electricity, would have anticipated or at least understood Ilyria’s lingering static sparks, and never would have guessed that his mind would immediately and inevitably follow that thought to the more obvious applications of ECT.

The other She paced his office like a lion. A cerulean lion, anyway, pontificating through rationalizations of her Fall, incomprehensible though it is to her the force of those dire arms. Irreconcilable to her grand foe (though spoken of as ‘our’ grand foe, the royal We still threading her speech patterns), the Wolf, the Ram, the Hart, powerless beings in her time, but now triumphant in the excess of joy sole reigning over heaven, or hell, or whichever name she chooses to give this earth on this day. 

He watched and in reply waxed poetical through her increasing impatience. Laughing at it somewhere inside where it still had the ability to hurt, where he still had the ability to bleed.

“The essence is there, you see. The essence is essential, something of it must remain or it isn’t it any longer. A bench is a bench, essentially a bench, accidentally a heavy wooden object or something covered in green paint.” He was muttering, tried to speak louder but heard his own voice as from the bottom of a lake.

She cocked her head, stepped forward.

He smiled beatifically. “We never describe things by their accidentals, Illyria. When we say _what_ it is we do not say white, or hot, or three cubits long, but a man or a god. Aristotle made that particular observation. Wise man, Aristotle. He was right, you know. Bench is an adequate answer. An assemblage of sticks painted green, we consider freakish.” 

She watches, perhaps curious though he is aware that it would be a mistake to attribute human feelings to a god, even to a fallen god.

Grief heavy as a blow just waiting for her arrival, pain so sharp it couldn’t be felt, not really, not until days later and then over the course of weeks, pain stretched into a long disbelief and a longer acceptance like hollow, purposeless regret. He is aware of slowly going mad.

It was worse that there wasn’t even anything he could have done. Worse that nothing could have changed it. 

If there had been something, if he’d only done something wrong, he’d at least have himself to blame.

~~~~~~~~

She killed him. 

He remembers. 

She blew a gasket, according to Angel’s more colorful phraseology, and lost everything of herself in a brilliant explosion of color and light and timespace. 

The last is only a guess, but he distinctly remembers dying, falling into the light of her death only because something was different this time. This time he opened the portal straight away; this time she knocked him aside without killing him but disabling the machine, creating a crack in _its_ engine block; this time she concentrated on dusting Angel and Spike before worrying about the two weaker beings, both the demon and the human. This time her explosion caught the edge of the wounded, wavering portal. 

This time he woke up in Hell.


	2. Crown My Fear Your King

There wasn’t even pain. 

Just the light, and then he blinked sideways at the blurry strokes of ancient Sumerian. He blinked again, discerned that he still had limbs, pushed himself upright away from the parchment unrolled across his desk. 

He blinked again, looked out through the double doors of his office onto the lobby of the Hyperion, and realized that something was desperately wrong.

“Hey, Wes,” Cordelia murmured, spotting his movement from the outer office area and venturing through the open doors. He only blinked at her. “Long night? Or early morning?”

Her hair was very short, chin-length but not blonde. She had a baby in her arms, an infant, and she barely looked up to see his response. “Connor?” Of any possibility, this one would have stunned him the most. Cordelia looked up then, grinning. He hadn’t seen her grin since. Well.

“This little guy’s doing fine,” she said indulgently, settling the baby more firmly in her arms. Wesley swallowed. She caught the motion this time, looked up to glare at him with all her old protective instincts. “But you aren’t fine,” she said firmly. “Don’t tell me you stayed all night again.”

“Alright,” he husked. He couldn’t look away. “You’re.” Awake (alive), but he knew better than to say the words. Something was wrong here.

She looked at him expectantly. “Well?”

“What?” Dazed, his hands moving restlessly over a prophecy he remembers translating. His notes are only half-finished, the worst of it still to come, and he can place the date. 

“So you’re going home, right?” She’s beside the desk now, chiding, but gently so that Connor is undisturbed. “You need sleep, Wes, you look like hell.”

“Hell, yes.” He is only repeating her final words (echo of Angel’s long-forgotten concern, his comparison of a fun hell versus the Britney Spears hell), but the explanation makes a kind of sense. The god-king of the primordium explodes and anything within close proximity … “Fred?”

“Out with Gunn, still,” Cordelia said absently, rather more concerned with the faces Connor is making. Wesley remembers an older boy layered beneath the false memories of a saner boy, and shudders. “They’re getting breakfast and more cleaning supplies, should be back any time.”

“Yes, good. I think I’ll.” Stops, can’t go on, watches Cordelia with black edging his vision. “I’ll just.” Can’t speak, or move, suddenly remembers that he hadn’t eaten in several days in either timeline, hadn’t had anything other than scotch for longer than he can count, can’t remember where he lives in this thread or when he’s supposed to start fucking Lilah.

“Wesley?” Finally distracted from Angel’s son. 

He hears her words from the next state, answers “I’m fine, perfectly alright,” or at least he intends to do so as he sinks back into the light.

~~~~~~~~

“Is he okay?” Angel says, and Wes blinks up at the circle of his friends, realizes he is on the floor and attempts to rise. 

There is another period of darkness. 

He blinks again. 

Angel is mentioning a hospital, Fred is kneeling beside him and he can only smile helplessly. 

“Hey,” she says. 

Gunn taps his other shoulder, grins down at him. “You gave us a scare, man.” 

And he wants to ask Gunn about the latest changes to city ordinance, wants to hear Gunn’s inability to answer. Nods instead, allows the younger man to help him sit up. 

Angel is holding Connor, Cordelia close beside them in the expected triumvirate, but both watching him with distinct worry.

“I’m alright,” he manages, relaxing against Gunn’s broad hands. He hasn’t been touched by another human since he’d stabbed Charles, by another being at all since Angel had questioned that decision by slamming him into a wall. “I think I just need to eat something.”

“You are getting too thin,” Gunn agrees easily, prodding at one collarbone as though comfortable in his presence.

“I’ve got just the thing,” Fred says brightly, scampering off to retrieve their usual breakfast takeout. 

“So, what have you been working on?” Angel asks, still focused on Connor but more aware than Wesley would like. “That prophecy about Connor? Cause I know it’s important and all, but you don’t have to kill yourself over it.”

Wesley shakes his head, looks at his desk with only a faint regret. “No, I don’t.” Then Gunn is helping him to his feet, and the issue of whether to tell the truth is lost in his sudden hunger. “It’s false.”

“False.” Angel seems to be taking the news rather calmly, considering. But then, he doesn’t know what Wesley would have found. “Figured that out last night?”

“Early this morning.” That is a lie, but as he’s hovering over Fred’s apportionment of breakfast he supposes even a paranoid vampire might overlook his tone. “The surface text seems genuine enough,” he elaborates over a small coffee and breakfast burrito (both from Fred’s favorite diner), wolfed down for nutrients alone even though the grease if nothing else would indicate a lack of such. 

Angel settles Connor into his bassinet, rocking it gently while Cordelia and Gunn claim their share of the food. 

“However, upon further study one finds a series of discrepancies in the author’s use of language, calligraphy, and so forth, that leads me to believe that the prophecy has been tampered with.”

“Tampered with?”

And even though Wesley is making this up, bullshitting with every phrase and mumbled explanation, it feels enough like something he might have discovered that Angel seems willing to believe.

“I’ll have to double check with a few of my sources,” he qualifies willingly enough. “But the original prophecy refers only to Connor. The additions concern the ‘vampire with a soul’ and his relationship to the miracle child.”

“So, what, like what kind of daddy Angel’s going to be?” Gunn asks around a mouthful.

“Not exactly.” Wesley would cringe from this if he hadn’t killed that impulse months ago. “The instances of forged writing include a passage that states ‘The father will kill the son.’ For obvious reasons, I believe that this section was added to the prophecy at a later date.”

“Damn right it was!” Connor woke at his father’s protest. Wesley closed his eyes against the wailing, and Angel’s attempts to soothe the infant. His food was ambrosial after so long without, and he knew for fact (now) that Angel would never harm his son. The others’ concern therefore seems distant, unconnected almost. Connor quieted, and Angel continued more gently. “I would never hurt my son.”

“I know,” Wesley said blankly. Gunn and Fred were huddled together. Cordelia put one hand on Angel’s arm, offering her comfort as always. Easy to forget how she would betray them later. “As I said, that portion is a forgery of sorts. The verb ‘to kill’ is genuine, as is the mention of Connor, but the object of the phrase has been altered and I believe that it refers to Connor’s destiny. He will eventually kill something, some great enemy. Nothing to worry about, really.”

“Nothing to worry about?” If anything, Angel seemed more distressed. “I don’t want my son having to kill things, Wes.”

“Frankly, Angel, that’s the better of the two options, wouldn’t you say?” He closed his eyes, dropped the last crumbs of his meal. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.” Angel muttered a sullen acceptance, and Fred approached him again with sympathy in her eyes. Didn’t make it hurt any less, knowing that he didn’t get to have her in any dimension. “I find I’m rather tired, would you mind terribly if I explained the rest of it tomorrow?”

Angel looked as though he wanted the rest of the prophecy now, ASAP, preferably quantified and with proof, but Cordelia fixed him with a glare and the vampire just nodded, shrugged, sent him on his way. 

~~~~~~~~

He didn’t actually make it out of the hotel. 

Another fainting spell on the front steps (“fainting” being only marginally more masculine than Fred’s assertion that he’d swooned) saw him standing shakily over the “employees only” bathroom sink, bracing himself with one hand while he dampened his face with the other. The intention was to splash cold water over his fever-hot skin (it worked in the movies) but with one hand the motion was nearly useless.

In the end he simply held himself upright by bracing both hands and his hips on the edge of the sink, staring at his own reflection in the mirror, hair longer and unkempt, minus a few scars, eyes harder than he remembered them being. 

His hand slid down the opening of his shirt, where he’d loosened the top three buttons, fingers sliding up his neck in a loose embrace. Just checking. Harder to remember when he wasn’t wearing a turtleneck, when he wouldn’t have shelves of them at his flat. Not now. Not anymore.

He sighed, looked down at the running water, caught a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye and spun to punch Angel - 

Of course. Mirror. 

Well, bugger.

Each realization flickered quickly upon the heels of the last, quickly enough that Angel’s automatic retaliation only crushed him against the mirror, rather than through it. Wesley remained frozen, wide-eyed and cautious while the vampire calmed down, fingers relaxing slowly from their grip on his shoulders, eyes fading from anger to puzzlement. “Wes?” he questioned. 

“Yes, Angel, I’m sorry about that, I …” There really was no explanation. “You startled me.”

“I get that.” Nodding, stepping back slowly so that Wesley slid to the ground instead of falling. “You’ve been apologizing a lot today, you don’t need to, I mean, I’m not mad about the prophecy being fake if that’s why.”

Wesley lowered the stare he knew was becoming antagonistic. Angel was trying. “It’s not the prophecy, exactly.” Ran a hand over his hair, flicked water away from them both. The faucet was still running. “Do you know how you would have, no.” Stopped himself with a gesture. “I know exactly what would have happened if that prophecy had been real.”

“Wes, I wouldn’t hurt him.” The anger had faded so much in the past hour. Angel was quietly pleading, barely more.

“I know,” he whispered. “But if I had believed it, if I had tried to save him.”

“Taken him?” Angel said, as though he’d just realized what the words could have meant, just realized the lengths to which one shattered Englishman would go for a friend. “You would have--?” And those brows came down. “I would have...”

“I know,” Wes said, cutting him off with a bitter smile. “And you would have been right to.”

It hadn’t happened, not yet, wouldn’t happen at all if Wesley had any say in the matter, and so Angel was able to shrug, and smile weakly, and protest, “If it had been to protect him, I mean, if you thought. It would have been best, right?”

Wesley shrugged, not able to meet guileless, killer’s eyes. “Maybe. If it had been the real prophecy.” It was as close to forgiveness as he would ever get, probably. 

“Yeah.” And shaken, Angel’s gaze slipped away to the obstructed view of Connor cradled against Fred’s breast. “It would have killed me.” 

“I know.” Wesley turned off the faucet, the squeak of the fixture loud after Angel’s nearly prayerful confession. “But it didn’t.” A declaration of his own. “I won’t let it.”

Angel smiled at that, eyes flicking to him with something like gratitude. “I know you won’t, Wes.” Too close to a declaration of trust; difficult to remember that in this timeline, he still deserved it. He shivered, looked away.

“I’ll try not to fail this time,” he said quietly, almost too quietly even for a vampire’s ears. As always, Angel frowned, shuffled, ignored the words. He’d never been comfortable with emotions. Feelings, as the vampire would mutter, almost shuddering, even though it meant that Wesley never was acknowledged. 

Funny. Wesley had never been comfortable with feelings either, and even the impulse to wish for more had been killed in this last, well, several months from now. 

Angel turned away as always, and now Wesley was only relieved.

“It’ll be fine, Wes,” Angel said instead. Wesley looked up, caught the tail of a dying smile. “Everything is going to work out. I know it will.”

Wesley forced a smile of his own, didn’t contradict the unusually optimistic words. It would work out this time. He would make sure of it if the attempt killed him. Everything really would be okay. 

It had to be.


	3. What Your Prophet Has Said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things begin to happen.

It’s not exactly a click when everything comes together, when the world makes sense, because the world never truly makes any kind of coherent sense at all. 

The world is very stubborn that way. 

No, it’s more like those perspective pictures of profiles and vases, or smaller pictures that make up another image altogether, like the way you can only see one half of the whole until the other possibility is pointed out to you. The way it only ever looked like a vase until someone pointed out the face on either side. 

Or maybe it’s more like the subtler version of that trick, more like the old lady’s face in the young, like the different interpretations of the craters on the surface of the moon. In Thailand they say there is a monkey sitting before a bowl in the moon. In Indonesia it’s a crab. And yet even with the new knowledge all you can see is the familiar Man in the Moon, even with the paradigm shift you can only see the old lady, or the young, one image or the other lost to its counterpart. 

As though two interpretations cannot exist in the same space, not visually, not conceptually. 

It had to be one way or the other, to put it in its simplest terms. Either Holtz died or Angel would lose his son and Wesley would lose his second chance. 

The older paradigm defined this action as murder. After the shift, he could only see it as necessary.

* * *

He never left the hotel that night, after his great revelation (dare he say epiphany?), went about for a time feeling as if his head would come apart at the seams, pain a constant pressure that refused even to throb. Just cloudiness of purpose, and the pain. 

And if Angel sensed that something was wrong, the excuse of a cold was easy enough to produce. Fred even made him soup. Gunn didn’t glare and cast aspersions on his manhood and moral character. But then, he never had in this time line. Not yet. 

“Have we been to the ballet?” he asked Angel in a moment of uncertainty, watching the vampire for the least sign of unrequited love, seeing only a quizzical smile and hearing only honest curiosity in his voice.

“No. Does that sound fun, do you think we should do that?” he asked, bouncing Connor softly in his strong arms.

Wesley smiled helplessly and a little bit lost and only able to nod.

Of course. Another thing that hadn’t happened yet. It was living in two times, really, the plight of the Connecticut Yankee not quite so as amusing now that he’s the one having to keep track of what has and what hasn’t happened at this point in history.

After that, he retreated to the office until lunch time, ostensibly pouring over his books but unable to concentrate on anything other than the sound of Connor’s soft, trusting breaths in the lobby. 

And how many times would he have to tell himself it didn’t matter before he could believe it?

He remembered so clearly what had happened the last time. 

The first time. 

But here Angel still smiled at him without a shadow. Here he’d believed that Charles was the answer to his lifelong desire for a family, a brother. Here Fred had smiled at him softly, and thought of him as a hero.

So the fact that they would abandon (would have abandoned) him didn’t matter. 

It didn’t. 

He just had to make sure he was good enough this time. 

At that thought, he nearly threw away the false prophecy, parchment already crumpling beneath his fingers before he drew a careful breath, spread the crumpled hide across his desk, and sat back carefully in the cradling office chair. He ran his fingers across the damning words, thought about framing the damned thing.

“Hey, English.”

He looked up at the familiar nickname, smiled reflexively, almost genuinely and Gunn crossed to the desk with a somewhat greasy sack of takeout. 

“Lunch,” Gunn explained, setting the sack where the grease wouldn’t harm any of the papers, propping one hip against the desk. 

Wesley stared up at him blankly for a moment, unable to remember a time when things had been this easy. Gunn began to frown, and Wes shook his head, sitting up quickly and shuffling the scattered research aside to pull the sack closer. 

“Thank you,” he murmured, opening the sack with a feeling of mild curiosity. 

“No problem,” Gunn said, showing no signs of moving and in fact settling in a bit more comfortably in his hipshot stance. “You doing okay?” he asked quickly, no more worried about subtlety than Cordy had ever been, really. 

Wes almost laughed. “I’m just tired, Charles.” He smiled up at his friend, knowing the very real exhaustion would show. “I really will go home after lunch.”

“Thought you always said it was ‘dinner’,” Gunn said pointedly, the final word in an atrocious English accent (and with a sick small jolt Wesley remembered the old banter, and finally caught in this white lie smiled weakly), still looking concerned enough to pry. “And I’ll drive you home if you’re not up to the bike, alright?”

“Yes, I,” Still had the bike, hadn’t bought the SUV yet. “Of course, thank you. I don’t think--”

“Man, now I know you don’t need to be driving.” And Gunn was laughing at him, but it wasn’t cruel, and Wesley just blinked down at the crumpled taco wrappers, knew Fred had talked them into Mexican again and suddenly it didn’t hurt anymore. He couldn’t have her, but. 

“Charles, I know I’ve been busy,” he began, opening his first taco rather noisily to hide his tension. “But I thought maybe.”

“Friday?” Gunn interrupted, and Wes waited for the rejection, waited for his friend to tell him he’d be busy, but Gunn said, “Cool. I still haven’t kicked your Bandicoot-loving ass.”

Could only close his eyes, try not to make too much of the routine, tried not to show his relief. “That’s arse, you heathen,” he managed, let Gunn leave on a laugh, let the tacos cool while he sat in closed-eyed solitude, shivering. Finally came to himself with a start, staring down at the taco in his trembling hands. A piece of lettuce fell to the waxed paper, and he took a quick bite. 

And it was the simplest thing in the world, really, to suddenly realize that he’d forgotten his Heidegger. All knowledge is interpretation, so of course nothing is fixed. After all, Wolfram & Hart wouldn’t expend so much effort on ensuring the coming Apocalypse if it were set in stone, so utterly certain that nothing could go wrong. Something could always go wrong. 

He would simply have to make sure that something did.

The taco wrapper was crumpled into a compact ball and tossed into the sack, the other tacos ignored and he stumbled off in search of Angel, certain that if he could just talk to the vampire, plan a course of action, everything would be okay.

“Hey, Wes,” Gunn called out, sounding almost disconcerted but then Wesley had left his office rarely enough in the past few weeks that this would be something of an event. 

But Wes ignored the call, running up the left-hand stair as quickly as he can manage. His hand on the rail was shaking. He could hear Fred and Gunn talking, could hear his own name in their lowered tones, but it is only worry. 

Everything was easier really if he only knew, really knew, absolutely held it in his mind, that he was mad as a badger. 

Behave as though sane, keep those squirrelly thoughts to yourself. 

His approach to Angel’s bedroom was equally cautious. Difficult to forget that he would see (soon, now, very soon) the vampire bloody-mouthed over the gently-breathing infant. Unless that was the dream. He had dream-vivid recollections of blood, in any case. 

Angel’s door was partly open, just open enough to seem dishonest in its invitation. Open was safer than locked, of course, and he stepped through carefully though he was feeling rather more clumsy even than usual, disconnected from his body, horrifically alien in a Freudian-Other, all-brain sense. 

Angel saw none of this. Angel just looked up from Connor’s crib and smiled, then frowned a bit once he’d scented the air.

“Hey, Wes, you doing okay?” Quiet concern, and Wesley nodded.

“Yes, of course.” Step closer. “I just thought.” Blink. Angel was frowning now. “Um. That we should discuss a plan of action, regarding Connor’s safety.” Blink again, and Angel had settled Connor beneath a blanket and was half a room closer. Wes started, stepped back. 

“Wes.” It wasn’t often like this, Angel’s voice. Low, and coaxing. Like Wesley might run. “What’s wrong, really?”

“It’s nothing, I’m just.” Looked down. There were tears in his eyes, he knew. Empty hole in his heart where Fred used to be not helped at all by her continued presence. This Fred had never. “I’m fine.”

A broad hand clamped around his arm; Wes looked up into Angel’s eyes, and almost amazed to find concern there he swayed a bit. Angel caught hold of him with his other hand as well, watching him carefully as he kept him on his feet. 

“Jeez,” the vampire muttered. Wes let his eyes drop, his whole body sagging in Angel’s grip but then he hadn’t expected Angel to actually care for him in any timeline. But “C’mon, take my bed.” and strong arms pushed and steered and supported him across the soft carpet, and he let his eyes close, let himself rest for the first time in what felt like forever as Angel pushed him down into freshly-washed sheets. *Ah*, Wes thought, *vampire senses*, and then sleep.

* * *

He staggered awake out of a dream, nothing clear just a general panicking and error, heart fluttering in his chest like an unresolved murmur. He fought for one breath. Another. Hand at his throat because his dreams didn’t understand that that hadn’t happened yet.

He slumped back against the headboard, feeling more exhausted than when he’d laid down, and saw Angel in his peripheral vision just after the shock would’ve killed him.

“Hey, Wes,” Angel said quietly, trying for soothing no doubt as he moved from his armchair to the edge of the bed. “It was just a dream, yeah? You’re okay.”

“Yes.” Still gasping but he made the effort to control his tone, to try for a smile. “I’m fine.”

It seemed a genuine enough act to him, but Angel frowned. “You’re not okay, Wes, you’ve been asleep for almost eighteen hours, you haven’t been eating … What the hell is going on?”

“Eighteen hours?” Impossible that sleep wouldn’t cure this ache, and he slumped a little further into the pillows. Angel edged forward a bit more, looking if anything even more concerned. “It’s okay, Angel. I’ve just been,” Transported back in time, no. Gifted with the Sight, no. Working on, ah yes. “Working on this prophecy, and Cordelia’s headaches, so I might be under a bit of stress.”

“A bit?” And Angel’s hand was suddenly on his knee, heavy but not warm through the blanket. The nightmare still boiling smooth beneath sleep. “You’re killing yourself, here. Look, Wes, it’ll be okay. You’ll see. The prophecy is done with, you took care of that. And Cordy’s had the visions for a few years now, she can handle ‘em. Hell,” And Angel paused, smiling a little. “Her birthday makes the two-year mark, doesn’t it?”

“Oh Lord.” Wes felt himself sway, felt Angel’s hands catch him, keep him upright and on the bed. “When is Cordelia’s birthday, how soon?”

“Friday.” Angel frowning now, rather fiercely worried as he only got for Connor anymore. “You’re supposed to pick up her cake, remember?”

“And what’s today?” His voice was faint faraway, just an illusion he knew but a comforting one nonetheless.

“Jeez, Wes, do you need to go to the hospital?” Angel’s hands flexing on his arms.

“What day is it?” he repeated, his own hands coming up to clutch Angel’s wrists, aware that he was teeth-bared snarling.

“Tuesday.” Closed off again, wary.

But Wes couldn’t care, could only force himself out of the bed, Angel’s hands still holding him down and, “Help me, damn you, get me downstairs!” Roaring now, Angel visibly startled and Connor crying in his crib, wailing, Wes swaying on his feet when Angel abandoned him to run to the baby. “Oh God.” There was no way in the world to fix this. He was walking toward the door, he could see the corridor but this was the beginning of everything, Cordy’s demon side, that was the beginning. Three days. Oh God.

“Shh, c’mon, I’ve got you.” And then Angel was there, one solid arm firm around Wesley’s waist, Connor in the crook of his other elbow. Angel steered them all through the door, and Wes looked across Angel’s broad chest at the burbling infant. Connor was wide awake, staring at him rather solemnly with one hand near his mouth. Wes blinked, helped Angel help him down the stairs. Couldn’t let it have happened. Couldn’t.

“What’s going on?” Gunn, his voice echoing through the lobby. Wesley saw him only blearily, barely tracked his loping run up the stairs to take his other arm. Angel said something, and they helped him to the couch. Connor was staring at him through infant-blue eyes. The color would change as he aged. Fred hovered, Cordelia took his arm and asked him what was wrong. His right hand was still caught in Angel’s shirt, his grip hard enough to ache. This would not happen.

“Cordelia.” He stopped, looked at her. She was worried about him, she’d always been so careful of him before. He tried for a smile, failed miserably. “There’s a problem with your visions.”

“What kind of problem?” That was Angel, voice low, somewhat threatening though Wes knew that the vampire was only expressing concern. He still cared. Wes tightened his clutch on Angel’s shirt. Everyone else was so quiet.

“Your headaches have been getting worse,” he told Cordelia, and not waiting for her denial, “In three days you will have another vision. That vision will force you into a coma-like state. The next will kill you.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Fred edged a bit closer. That’s right. She wasn’t as comfortable with the group. Cordelia was pale. He couldn’t move his right hand, and so caught her wrist with his left. 

“We need to find a way to cure the headaches or to repair the damage (“Damage?” Gunn asked, voice sharp.) and we have very little time. Can we reach Giles or Willow?” Deliberately calm voice, he was still the boss, Angel solid and subordinate at his side. 

“Um, yeah,” Cordy breathed. He kept his gaze steady, determined if not hopeful. “I think Giles stayed in town, after …” She broke off with a glance to Angel, continued. “So, you have a plan?” And her eyes were so hopeful, so bright. “You can fix this?”

“I’m going to try.” The words almost wouldn’t come. He gentled his hold on her wrist, tried for reassuring if nothing else. 

“What can we do?” Angel, carefully not moving because his friend apparently needed the comfort, cradling Connor, now sleeping, in his other arm. Wesley closed his eyes. “Wes?”

“I’ll need components, for the spell,” he said, staring at the dark behind his eyes.

“Great, get us a list,” Gunn said, smile in his voice. Wes shook his head.

“I need to find the spell first.” He felt Cordelia jerk, squeezed her wrist. “It would be advisable to contact Giles as soon as possible.”

“I’m on it.” Her voice was firm. He forced his fingers to let her go. Remembered her lying white against hospital sheets. 

“Gunn, maybe pick up some food?” Angel said. Wes didn’t see the gesture but knew that Angel was thinking of him. Something warm started up in his chest. “Something healthy.”

“Sure thing. Anything you want?” Message apparently received, Gunn’s voice as warm as this feeling.

“I’m not very hungry,” he tried. 

“Soup it is.” And Gunn was gone. Fred went with him, as it should be.

“C’mon, let’s get you to your office.” Angel’s hand cold against him, and he found himself staring at Connor again until he was lowered into his leather executive chair. He’d missed this chair.

Angel sat down across from him, where the clients usually sat, Connor held protectively as always. “Wes?” Who was staring down at the false prophecy. “Wes, how did you know?”

“What?” 

“About Cordelia?” His voice was grave.

“Angel, I.” Almost couldn’t say it. “Will you trust me?”

“I trust you, Wes.” His eyes were very lucid, very clear. 

Wes flinched away, stared down at the papers on his desk. “Later?” he begged, very aware that he was begging. Finally a broken man. “Can I explain later?”

“Sure, Wes.” Angel leaned back, settled himself in the chair to play with Connor’s developing motor skills.

Wesley stared at him for a long moment, breathed carefully and wondered why he couldn’t see. Angel ignored him very carefully, and Wes blinked his eyes clear, turned to his bookcase.

After a few hours, there was a three-deep stratum of texts spread across his desk. Spell-books on top, more obscure works beneath. The large majority of the spells were in Mandarin, pre-Qin dynasty and so in a dozen written dialects. There were a few texts in Hindi, one in an obscure Polynesian-native demon dialect (or anyway the demons were native to Polynesia, though the language itself bore a distinct similarity to Bantu) that he’d never learned, and there must be some connection between these cultures and a desire to become part demon. And then of course Summation texts on negating pain, spells developed during the height of the Persian empire for repairing the brain damage caused by concussion, various causes of and cures for epilepsy.

There were a hundred possibilities. It was difficult to think, to choose. 

Cordelia interrupted at one point to let them know that Giles was on his way, that Willow would be following after she’d finished something. Sometime after that Gunn returned with a quart of soup from his (Gunn’s) favorite deli, and set it on top of the three-shelf bookshelf near Wesley’s desk. Wes ignored both, dove under his desk for a survey of Etruscan demonology he remembered (twice-over) kicking away from his chair in a late-night fit of pique.

“Hey, boss-man, what’s the plan?” Cordelia asked, seeming to appear from nowhere. 

Wes paused, grasped the scattered survey and climbed back into his chair. Her arms were crossed, she was glaring. He remembered enough to know these were signs of danger. Angel was watching him, too, calm and steady, Gunn less so at his side. A breath. Back to his spells.

“I need to either cure your vision headaches or turn you into a demon.”

“What?!” She spoke in such extreme punctuation. He knew that once.

“I obviously would prefer the former, but anything to ensure your survival.” And back into the text. Ignore her dismayed “I don’t want to be a demon.” Try to calculate the ramifications of either option, every option. Better to cure, obviously. Obviously. Change in brain structure? Change the nature of the visions? Skim a page, turn a page. New book, new language. 

Cordy was still there, a soft sobbing in the background. Angel as silent comfort. 

Skim a page, turn a page.

In Arabic and Hebrew the word for uncanny is the same as daemonic. Freud’s postulated Other, the Double formed first as a means to immortality, then later as a horrifying reflection of the same. Narcissistic though the thought may be, the Uncanny is still the Self. Just a different form, inherently daemonic if the Hebrew are to be believed. So what would literalization matter?

“Wes.” Skim a page, turn a page. “Wes!” Angel. Wesley raised an eyebrow, not looking up from the neat rows of characters until Angel’s hand blocked most of the paragraph. “Wes, eat your soup.”

“Angel,” there’s no time. Closed his eyes. “Alright.”

“Good.” Angel sounded amazed that it had been so easy. Wes smiled, grabbed the container. Chicken noodle, Gunn’s favorite, stone-cold. He drank it down anyway, fished out a noodle from the congealing broth and went pointedly back to his books. There was no time. 

“Wes, damnit, would you.” 

And there were broad hands on his arms, pushing him upright in the seat and he was looking into brown eyes in a face thinner than he remembered. He couldn’t move his arms, and Angel was angry. Stuff of nightmares. But he didn’t flinch, knew better. 

“Wes, this is important,” Angel said to begin the usual speech. “I know it is, but you have to take care of yourself.”

“It’s never different,” Wesley protested, and Angel shook him lightly. 

“Yes, it is! This is, look, something is wrong, and you killing yourself isn’t going to make it better.” There was something fierce and lovely in his eyes.

“It might.”

“God.” Sound of disgust, and Angel turned away, pushing away from him with enough force behind the move to roll his chair back a few paces. Wesley watched his stiff square back, glanced helplessly at another book. “Stop that.” Angel hadn’t turned around. “I know you’re reading. Jesus.”

“I have to.” It had to be an explanation, was the only one he could give.

“Give me fifteen minutes, eat something real.” A concession, if he chose to take it as such.

It was almost too much to deal with, really. Couldn’t remember Angel caring this much the first time. 

“I don’t think I can,” he whispered, and he didn’t think he was talking about food.

But Angel was saying, “Just try some more soup, maybe some crackers, that’s all I’m asking.” And what else could he do but nod.

Wearily, it was taken as permission, Angel levering him out of his leather executive chair and steering him gently through the doors into the lobby where he was once again deposited on the couch. He was beginning to feel like an invalid, or like they were treating him as an invalid. He should resent it more.

“Now just stay there,” Angel said, warily, like he might run. Connor was in his bassinet, apparently watching this action avidly. “I’ll be right back with more food, don’t try to go anywhere.”

He caught Angel’s hand, knew that he was a distraction, wondered where everyone else was and what they were doing to help Cordelia. “I’ll be here, I promise.”

Angel stared at him for a long moment. Wesley stared back, having little other choice though he began to wonder if he’d actually said what he thought he’d said. 

After a few long moments, something in Angel seemed to relax. He smiled, one of those smiles that lit up his face, the one Cordelia had termed ‘goofy,’ and said, “Good, just, I’ll be right back.”

And then he practically ran down to the kitchen. Wes watched him go, black leather coat billowing heroically behind him, idly wondered if he’d attempt to slay the food before cooking it. But it was an idle thought. Wes sat quietly, something entirely unaccustomed rising within his comfortably numb chest, and waited.

Time passed, not much, not enough time to heat up a carton of soup. Fred drifted down the stairs, hair still damp, and smiled as she sat beside him on the couch. “How’re you doing?” she asked, her manner encouraging. He shrugged, tried for a smile.

“Still tired, I suppose.” She’d been like a bird in his arms, all long bones and a fine, narrow, light stick-person when she collapsed in a spray of lung-deep blood.

“Well no wonder.” Her hair was different, he realized. At some point she would start taking better care for her appearance, would curl and mousse and gel as if enough hair products would replace Cordelia. The memories provided almost a constant double vision. “With you working on prophecies, and this with Cordelia.” She was painfully earnest, and he couldn’t answer. Couldn’t list the things he should have been doing. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I’m working on it,” he breathed, missing the damage-induced roughness deep in his throat. 

She put her hand on his arm, gentle, barely present and barely comforting after the solid weight of Angel’s hands. “It’ll all be alright,” she said.

And then Gunn came downstairs, also damp.

And the front door opened, distracting Gunn’s gaze before the suspicion could form. 

And Fred snatched her hand away as though she had reason to feel guilt.

“Giles is here!” Cordelia announced (holding open the door like a game show host and smiling as though for a toothpaste commercial), and stepped aside to let the older man step into the building. 

Angel reappeared from the kitchen, soup close to boiling in his oblivious grip, to smile apologetically in Giles’s direction.

And Gunn was now watching Wesley with something like wariness, unspoken, in his eyes. 

First thing wrong.

“Oh bugger,” Wes decided.

And the world slid sideways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments would be pretty cool, if you enjoyed this.


	4. Just Need One Last Nail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Help arrives, and some secrets come out.

“Has this happened often?”

English accent, Surrey, well-educated. Giles had been called. 

“How often?” Should Giles sound that surprised? Shocked, really. 

And a further-off mumbling, a warm hand on his forehead flattening his eyebrows.

“Did none of you think to take him to hospital? Or to at least check for concussion?”

“He said he was okay,” Angel said hesitantly. 

“Is something wrong with him?” Fred asked. 

Gunn didn’t say anything. 

He decided that he must be awake. Debated not revealing that fact.

“Ooh, ooh, he’s awake!” Angel. Well, damn it.

“Wesley?” Giles, that big warm hand slapping the flat of his cheek gently. He opened one eye, grudgingly. “Oh, excellent.” The ex-Watcher was smiling. “Have you any idea what’s happened to you?”

“Yes,” he croaked, then moved to sit up. Giles raised one brow, but didn’t force him to remain supine. Once upright the circle of his friends didn’t seem so suffocating. “I’ll be fine, Mr. Giles, do you know why you’re here?”

Giles blinked at the abrupt subject change, nodded. “Cordelia explained the basics after you fell over, Wesley, what the hell is going on here?”

“Hey,” Angel said quickly. “We shouldn’t badger him,” protective instincts fading as quickly as ever, “should we?”

“No, no,” Giles acquiesced, for a wonder. “You’re right.” With a sharp look to Wes. “I’ll just go over your notes, then?”

“I’ll,” he began, struggling to stand. 

There was apparently a collective fit. However it happened, Wesley remained on the couch. He stared up at everyone, ears ringing a bit. Angel’s hand was firm on his shoulder. Giles’s hand was warm beneath his left collarbone. “I’ll just sit here, then,” he said weakly. 

Giles smiled at him, Angel squeezed his shoulder gently, and handed him the soup. It had cooled enough to drink, barely. Giles shared some sort of look (in an alternate universe he would call it paternally approving) with Angel, and stepped back to leave.

“Giles,” Wesley said quickly, “You must understand, we only have until Friday.”

“Yes, Wesley, I know.” He seemed affable, if confused. “Cordelia was quite thorough in her briefing, actually.”

“Yeah,” Cordelia muttered. “I told him everything you told us. Visions blah blah headache yadda yadda …”

“She’s kidding,” Fred broke in quickly. She was smiling, looked a bit nervous. Charles’s hand was large on her shoulder. Wesley blinked.

“I’ve narrowed it down to three or four (Angel’s eyes began to brighten with hope.) dozen (And Angel slumped again.) spells on daemonic merging, epileptic cures, etc, but the list needs to be narrowed down,” Wes began, but Giles interrupted him with barely-concealed impatience. 

“I’ll look over your notes,” he said firmly. Full-on Watcher voice. Wesley shrank a bit. “You rest, and join me when you aren’t ready to faint.”

He nodded. Didn’t protest the fainting remark. Tried not to see Angel’s combined smugness (at getting him to sit still) and chagrin (at not being the one to make him sit still) out of the corner of his eye. Breathed in the steam from the soup. Tomato basil. Someone was learning. He drank quietly, and sat very still for some time, didn’t respond as Gunn drew Fred off toward the stairs and Cordelia announced that she intended to help Giles with the filing system. 

Angel wandered off shortly after she gained entry to the office, moving stealthily to lean over the bassinet and play with Connor’s grasping hands, making little cooing noises that had become familiar and less strange at one time.

Giles reemerged from Wesley’s office, balancing cup and saucer across to Wesley’s seat on the couch. “I made you some tea,” he said quietly, taking the empty soup carton and replacing it with long-broken (yet to be broken) china. Wesley stroked the pattern with his thumb, watching the tea tremble light dancing across the darkened surface in his unsteady hands. Giles was watching the motion as well, eyes still and grave. Still as a grave. Wesley smiled.

“I don’t suppose you’ve gone through my notes,” Wesley asked leadingly. Sipped the gently steaming tea, closed his eyes as the warmth spread through him.

“Not yet, no,” Giles said, watching him as though waiting for the first crack to appear. As shattered as this cup would be. “Wesley, I know we’ve never been what you would call friends,” he began.

“No,” Wesley agreed. The spreading warmth cushioned the reminder. 

“However.” Giles paused, looked down. “I am aware that something isn’t right.” Hint of the old scolding voice, librarian to his bones. 

“You mean aside from Cordelia’s impending death?” Dry as a desert, let a little of the bastard show.

But Giles just looked down, pressed the bridge of his nose beneath the requisite glasses. Wesley paused. Giles looked older, tired. You can’t go back again. Not really.

“I can’t ask you to trust me,” Wes said very softly. “I haven’t that right. But it isn’t something I can explain just now.”

“Like the fact you haven’t any research on Cordelia’s condition?” Giles snapped, then visibly forced himself to calm down. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, Wesley, but how do you know these things? According to your notes you haven’t even finished this prophecy Angel says is no longer a problem.”

“I stopped taking notes?” he tried. Took another drink of the rapidly-cooling tea. Fiddled with his glasses.

“Wesley.” Giles stopped, sighed, looked for a moment as though he might start polishing his glasses. “I do trust you, and I’m aware that you’ve changed. I won’t.” Struggled with the words. “I would like an explanation eventually.”

“Of course,” Wesley agreed easily enough, not meeting the older man’s eyes, feeling the pang of a trust already betrayed. “Once there’s time,” he added pointedly, glancing toward his office. 

“Yes, quite.” And Giles seemed to give up on something, resettling his glasses with a quick hand and standing easily. He turned away, paused. “I won’t forget, Wesley.” A warning.

“Neither will I,” Wesley whispered. A promise.

* * *

There was little else to do but think, sitting very still on the couch, which seemed to spin beneath him. Angel couldn’t take the visions, couldn’t see the problem and respond at the same time. Gunn would in a few short years face the same problem as Cordelia, as would Fred. 

He thought briefly of adding the visions to his own time-addled brain, and began giggling uncontrollably. 

Angel came and sat beside him, silently, listening to him strangle on the mad laughter and apparently offering silent support. 

It wasn’t really that funny. Not really. He ran down within a few minutes, sat gasping at Angel’s side. The vampire still didn’t say anything, just placed a solid hand on his knee, and glanced over at him tentatively. In anyone else he would’ve said shyly. Wesley tried a smile, failed.

“I’m alright,” he whispered. 

It wasn’t true, but Angel didn’t question that either, just turned his head to keep an eye on Connor without leaving Wesley. 

Wesley bit his lip, not hard enough to draw blood, and drained the last cold sugar-sludged tea from the cup. Angel’s hand squeezed his knee carefully. They were quiet, just the soft sounds of Connor’s breaths and Giles rustling papers in Wesley’s office. It was too much.

It was like living in some eternal lucid dream, with all its underlying taint of an impending, inevitable end. It was like waiting for a heart attack, a great weight settling down on him until his breaths came in desperate, shallow gasps. His eyes closed, and Angel’s hand, heavy but not warm, was the only thing tying him to the real. 

“Wes?” he heard, and tried to calm himself. Angel’s hand moved to his shoulder as though to hold him up, to hold him down. Wesley bit the inside of his cheek until it bled, swallowed the copper down. He was shaking apart, on the inside, where no one would notice. Something was wrong. Giles had been right. Something was wrong.

“Wes? Hey, Wes.” Cordelia; her hand was on his cheek, moved to his forehead. Checking for fever. Her hand was warm, hot, something to flinch away from. He pressed further against Angel’s thigh, somehow unsurprised to find himself partly in Angel’s lap, Angel’s hand on his shoulder still holding him together.

“Is he awake?” Cordelia said quietly.

“I can’t tell,” Angel murmured, squeezing his shoulder carefully, fingers pressing into the tendons.

“I should get Giles.” She sounded so concerned.

“Yeah.” Angel was patting his shoulder, sort of petting it and Cordelia perched on the edge of the sofa near the curve of his rib cage, taking his right arm and hugging it to her stomach, only then lacing her fingers in with his.

“Angel, what’s happening to us?” She sounded terrified now, and her fingers tightened painfully around his hand. “What’s wrong with Wes?”

“I don’t know.” Angel said, openly frustrated. Wes felt a movement like Angel might be shaking his head. “Everything seemed to come as a part of everything else. It’s all --”

“Part of the same thing,” Cordelia finished for him. “My visions, Connor, Wes getting sick. It’s all related, isn’t it.”

“I think so,” Angel allowed, fingers tightening on Wesley’s shoulder almost painfully. 

Wesley managed some small sound of protest, and he squirmed in their hold without much hope of escape. Angel loosened his grip but didn’t let go, and Wesley relaxed.

“Is he waking up?” Cordelia asked anxiously, her hand going again to his forehead. Her hand seemed to hot, like sunlight, and he turned his head towards Angel’s cooler belly.

“I don’t know, I can’t tell.”

“Maybe we could ask Lorne.”

“Would that help?” Painful to hear the sudden hope.

“Has he fainted again?” Giles, and the office doors shutting softly. “He needs to be in hospital.”

“Maybe,” Angel muttered, not moving.

“He’s not waking up,” Cordelia said to Giles. “Maybe we *should* take him to the hospital.” To Angel now, brief fascination that he could tell the difference. “Maybe Giles is right.”

Giles was silent, but Wesley could imagine the looks being exchanged.

Sound of the front doors. “Hey, Wes okay?” Gunn’s voice, concerned again. Something tight within him unwound a bit.

“Gunn,” Angel said, his voice suddenly commanding, playing boss again. “Where’s Lorne? He hasn’t been home all week.”

“He said something about rebuilding his club. Decorators, or something.” Gunn’s voice sounded a shrug. Careless.

“Get him back here, fast.”

“I don’t know, man. I’m not exactly his favorite person right now.” Gunn shuffled his feet a little, the sound soft on the lobby tiles. “I’m part of the reason that this is his third renovation, ya know?”

“It’s for Wes,” Angel insisted. “He’ll come.”

“Yeah.” Could almost see Gunn nodding, accepting. “I’m on it.” And gone again, quick squeak of his trainers across the lobby and the outer doors slammed behind him.

“Not the hospital?” Cordelia snapped.

“Who’s Lorne?” Giles asked. “A mystical healer?”

“Something like that.” Angel paused, and Cordelia’s hand flexed around his. “I don’t think this is physical.”

“What are the symptoms?” Giles said, stepping closer.

“He’s not waking up. That’s a coma,” Cordelia said, sarcasm probably covering her concern.

“But he’s responsive to pain,” Angel said. “It’s something else.”

“Yes,” Giles said distractedly, very close now. And then there was a thumb in his eye, and he was staring blearily at Giles. “Wesley?” Giles asked carefully. 

Wesley tried to speak, but there was nothing. Giles’s thumb released his eyelid, and Giles was saying, “I think you’re right, this isn’t physical, not exactly. If anything, it reminds me of severe magical exhaustion.” A pause. “Has Wesley been performing a great many spells, or.”

“Not that I know of,” Cordelia shrugged.

“No,” Angel agreed.

“He’s been working really hard,” Cordelia tried. “Maybe he’s just tired?”

“No. It’s something else,” Giles said quietly.

“Is there something you can do to, I dunno, snap him out of it?” Angel asked.

Giles made a soft considering noise. “Possibly. But it would be healthier for him to sleep it off. He must’ve been doing something.”

“He,” Cordelia began hesitantly. “He knew those things about my headaches getting worse. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone.”

“And he was so sure when the next vision would be,” Angel said slowly, as though putting something together.

“Is there some kind of spell that could let him see the future?” Cordelia asked.

“Not precisely,” Giles said. “Any such spell allows only a glimpse of possibilities. No one has only one possibly future. At most he would see choices.”

“But there is a spell,” Angel repeated, in that way of clarifying things he was sure would annoy him.

Wes found himself in that place where it was easier to hurt than to move.

“Yes,” Giles confirmed wearily. “There is a spell. Had he tried any manner of prescience spell, future-telling, foresight, what have you, it would have taken a great deal of energy. This type of spell deals with time. And time is always difficult, slippery. It takes power, and concentration.”

“And if he screwed it up?” Cordelia whispered.

“He’d be dead.” Giles sighed. “Obviously he’s far more experienced than I recall.”

“Or I. Me.” Angel stopped, took an impatient breath. “I mean, he didn’t build up to this, you know? He’s not exactly all double double toil and trouble over here.”

“Huh?” Cordelia. 

“That is odd,” Giles conceded. “There should have been some sign. Unless he is possessed of far more power than we knew. If it had been dormant, and he accessed it somehow …”

And listened to them wend further and further from the truth. 

“Maybe we should figure this out some other time,” Cordelia said, anger behind the snark. “Right now we should worry about making him better.”

Giles sighed. Wesley could sympathize. “Determining what precisely is wrong with him would help us to make him better.” The last few words slightly mocking. “But in any case, he does need rest, and I have work to get back to.”

“I could take him upstairs,” Angel offered. “That’d be easiest.”

“Duh,” Cordelia, happier now. “Want some help?”

Nah,” Angel said, and his arms moved to curl around Wesley’s back below his arms and beneath his knees. He was lifted easily. “I got it. Watch Connor for me?”

He was conscious of his head cradled against Angel’s shoulder, of the flex of powerful muscles smooth-gliding through layers of wool and leather, of Angel holding him close, safe, unnecessary breaths soft against Wesley’s hair. Cordelia’s heels were loud against the lobby floor, and she was saying something that he heard as though from very far away, her footsteps fading as Angel carried him farther up the stairs. 

The front doors opened, and Gunn said to the room at large, “Lorne’s on his way, and let me tell you he was _not_ happy to see me.”

Angel paused, turned, revealing no strain in continuing to hold Wesley’s weight. “Gunn, send him up when he gets here?”

“You got it,” Gunn said, closer now but they were already topping the stairs and leaving behind them Cordelia’s impatient “Why isn’t he here now?” and Gunn’s softer answer, only the defensive tone retained.

Didn’t particularly remember being laid upon Angel’s bed, being folded into the sheets, didn’t remember the point at which his mind finally quieted enough to let him rest.

Remembered being shaken awake by gentle hands and a crooning voice, blinking up into devil’s eyes and a sickbed smile.

“Rise and shine, muffin,” Lorne said, surprisingly subdued in both tone and appearance. Or perhaps not surprisingly so, considering. “Ready to sing for Uncle Lorne?”

He was still blinking the blur from his eyes, didn’t respond to the remark though Angel muttered something about that being the sickest thing he’d ever tried to not imagine, just stared up at Lorne and tried to remember if letting the demon know would change anything. 

It was a temptation, powerful, to pour out his grief like rotting flesh, all his madness and fear and terrible, terrible knowledge. Felt an old Clapton lyric slip beneath his thoughts, and caught himself staring up at Lorne almost fearfully, eyes too wide, able only to wait for an involuntary disclosure. Could only remember Lorne as a friend, knew he didn’t deserve the burden of knowledge. His heart sank, settling hollow inside as Lorne’s eyes widened, lips parting, almost like the last time Wesley had accidentally allowed a reading.

Wesley flung up a hand before Lorne could speak, said hoarsely, “Angel, wait outside.”

“Wes?”

“Now,” he ground out, not looking away from Lorne, that same damn line running even now through his head. Heaven’s door, indeed.

Angel shuffled out into the hall, kicked-puppy in a way Wes had seen once too often, shutting the door behind him softly. Wes kept his burning eyes on Lorne, watching the demon read him, watching the growing fear and panic.

“We need to talk,” Wesley said very quietly because sometimes the quiet was more frightening than a scream.

“Yeah,” Lorne said, dazed. “We sure do.” And scooting away from where Wes had levered himself up against the headboard. “What the hell is going on here?”

“I’m from the future,” Wes said plainly, and it was a relief, a release, but one unenjoyed as to keep Lorne from running he very quickly said, “You know I’m telling the truth, I can sing if I need to.”

“No, that’s okay,” Lorne snapped, fingers trembling to his left temple. “I think maybe I need a visit to my lady of the sea breeze before you cry me a river.”

“Are you alright?” Wes asked, using his client voice, soft and coaxing and not at all judgmental.

“No, I’m not alright!” Lorne yelled. “The future? You mean all that, that four horseman shit is going to happen?”

“Not if I can stop it.”

“Stop it. You.” Lorne shook his head; when he turned back he was calmer, voice almost kind. “Pumpkin, I saw what’s coming, and I don’t think James Bond could spy a way outta this one.”

“But I know what’s coming,” Wes insisted, leaning forward on shaking arms. “I know what it is and I can find a way to stop it.”

“And now I know, too.”

“Shouldn’t change anything.”

“Or I could help.” Ignored Wesley’s immediate head-shake. “You need help, you need to tell them, marshal the troops, sound the trumpets, send for the cavalry!”

“Too dangerous. I don’t want to risk any of you.”

“Wesley.”

He looked up. Lorne was uncommonly serious, eyes grave with knowing. “What?” he said, voice rough.

“That was exactly the mistake you made last time.”

Stopped breathing for a moment.

“That’s what you read?” he whispered.

“Yeah, sugar.”

Nodded, then. “You’re sure?”

“Sure as suicide.”

“Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments so far! More would be ... cool ....


	5. A Flaming Red Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They come up with a plan, finally. But in carrying it out, something goes wrong.

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as I can be,” Giles said wearily. He looked old, suddenly, and Wes was forced to glance down, away.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.” Giles looked up at him, expression somewhat bemused. “I don’t entirely understand your position in all this --”

“I’m from the future,” Wes said flatly, tired of the repetition.

“Right.” And Giles just looked tired again. Took off his glasses to clean them. Wesley touched his own; he’d almost forgotten what it was like to wear them, in the future. Giles tried to catch his eyes. “Will Angel return to normal once we dispose of the adulterated blood?”

Wesley swallowed. “I never thought that he mightn’t.”

“We’ll have to keep an eye on him, then.” Giles sighed, seemed not to know what to do with his hands. “Any magical experience you may have gained.” He paused, looked away. “Will it have remained? You obviously have the potential, but at this point it is unawakened, I’m guessing?”

Wes blinked, felt an incredulous less-sane smile form. “I hadn’t thought of that.” There was so much he hadn’t thought of. Shook his head, looked down at the spell-paper. “Willow is coming?”

“Certainly.” Giles seemed to have regained his composure, and smiled reassuringly in the old Watcher mask.

“Then I’ll assist where I can.” Ran a hand through his tangled hair, remembered he would prefer it much shorter.

“You agree, then?” Careful, moreso than Wesley remembered, of his feelings.

“It seems the best solution.” They were all so uncertain here. 

“Wesley, if.” Giles paused, leaned a bit closer. “If you can’t help with anything, I don’t want you to.” Bad sign that words had failed this man. “It’s not your responsibility to fix everything, understand?”

Wes stilled, swallowed his first angry words. “I have to,” he said in a forced calm.

“I know you think you have to,” Giles began, sensibly validating the patient’s position.

“You don’t know what’s coming, you don’t know how bad things will become.”

“You might not be able to stop it at all.” Giles overrode him, posture tense enough to break. “Some things can’t be changed, however you might wish it.”

“I’ve got to try.” He spoke through a rising hollowness, a terrible growing resignation like a weakness in his limbs.

He heard Giles move in his chair, and realized he’d closed his eyes.

“I know,” Giles said softly. “I just don’t want you to blame yourself.”

“There’s no one else,” he whispered, blinking through exhausted tears that wouldn’t fall.

“There’s me,” a voice said brightly through the office door, and Willow poked her head through the opening, grinning a welcome.

The two men shuffled apart a few inches, Giles moving as if to clean his glasses but stopping in a frustrated, awkward moment. Willow looked at him blankly, then at Wesley, who was surreptitiously thumbing at one eye. “Okay,” she said slowly, coming all the way into the room.

“What’s the hold-up?” Cordelia said, coming in on Willow’s heels.

“Nothing,” Giles said easily. “We were discussing options.”

Wesley managed to look properly grateful.

“Then let’s get this show on the road,” Cordelia said, impatient but Wesley knew a cover for fear when he saw one.

“How’s your head?” he asked softly.

“Okay for now,” she said, smiling her big false toothpaste-commercial smile. He just looked at her steadily, barely hearing Willow and Giles in whispered conference beside him. After a moment she softened, the smile melting to something more natural, closer to real. “I’ll be okay,” she said softly, stepping forward to put a reassuring hand on his arm. “As soon as you get done with this spell, I’ll be right as rain.”

“That is the idea,” Giles said, breaking into their tableau. Willow stood beside him, looking a little too ready, the interest sparking in her eyes. Wesley really looked at her for the first time. Her hair was short, trendy, he supposed. She certainly seemed more sure of herself, more certain. He glanced at Giles, for a moment unsure. “We should begin immediately,” Giles was saying, and Wes blinked, head clearing as if of a fog. “We have very little time, and this spell requires some preparation.”

“Gunn said he’d be back with the ingredients once he gets rid of the bad blood,” Cordelia said, a little too easily, eyes fixed on the innocuous scrap of spell-paper. Lorne was good for more than revealing his secrets. His contacts had proven invaluable in the research process. 

“It has to be tonight?” Willow said softly, her first sign of indecision (humanity, he thought uncharitably. He remembered what she would/could become).

“It has to be tonight,” Wesley said. He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice. “Is that a problem?”

“I guess not,” she said, humoring him now. “Only, who gets the visions?”

“That is the question,” he returned. Cordelia only looked afraid, now. 

“I thought I was keeping them,” she said shrilly, striding forward with such strength, and he remembered she’d begun training with Angel. He held up his hands, a placating gesture, as Giles stepped in.

“You will be, ultimately,” Giles explained, stepping between Cordelia and Wesley as if to offer his protection. “However.”

“However?” Cordelia yelped.

“However,” Giles said repressively. “In order to alter the structure of your brain we will need to temporarily remove the visions. Temporarily,” he repeated when she opened her mouth to yell. She drew a breath, glared.

“So, you take out the visions, turn me into a half-demon whatsit, then stick them back in?”

“Essentially, yes,” Wesley said quietly.

“That’s a good question, though,” Willow said. “I mean, do you stick the visions in one of us? Or in a jar? Only if they could go in a jar why not leave them there? And then you could alter a Mirror of Taraltas to kinda look and see if anything’s happening.”

“Yes, well, they can’t go in a jar,” Wesley snapped, throwing her words back in a quick rush of temper. She glared at him, timid but for a moment flashing a dangerous rage, and he sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. But we’ve checked. And I did a great deal of research while working for Wolfram and Hart. This is the only way that won’t render the visions useless or alter their bearer beyond recognition.”

“That’s okay.” And just like that she was smiling again. Wes blinked. Bit his lip, decided it was Giles’s problem, not his. “So, Wolfram and Hart, wow,” Willow continued. “Is that more of the future stuff?”

“I’d assumed that Cordelia would have filled you in,” Wes said, confused by the change in topic.

“I didn’t exactly give her your Resume-That-Never-Will-Be,” Cordelia snapped. “God.”

“Could we go over the spell, please?” Giles said, tone of long suffering. 

“Yes, of course.” Wesley was the first to speak, instantly chastened. He was just so tired. “We just need someone for the visions.”

“It has to be Gunn, doesn’t it?” Cordelia said, voice low and sick. 

Wesley touched her hand, offered, “I’ll take them.”

“We need your help with the alterations,” Giles reprimanded gently. Alterations. Like a conversation at the tailor’s.

“We could do it,” Willow protested, straightening up behind the desk. “ _I_ could do it.”

“And Charles Gunn hasn’t exhausted himself to the point of illness in the past week,” Giles said easily, too-reasonably, the near-violent undercurrent to his words mostly hidden. “And you aren’t doing this alone.” Speaking ostensibly to Wes (who was – barely – upright, only through stubbornness), but the words were for Willow.

Wesley tightened his grip on Cordelia’s hand when she would have intervened, just watched them carefully until Willow dropped her eyes. 

“Alright,” she muttered.

“You don’t need to protect me,” Wesley said carefully. Giles turned to him, softening visibly.

“I know. But we could use another set of eyes.”

“Of course.” Wesley gave in gratefully. He didn’t really want to be that brave.

“Hey,” Angel said, easing in behind Wes, bouncing Connor lightly in his arms. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” Cordelia said, freeing her hand from Wesley’s with a falsely cheerful smile. “We’ve decided to give Gunn the visions, stir a magical stick through my brains, and stuff the visions back in.”

“Okay.” Angel glanced at the others, spreading about his bemused look. “That’s the plan?” he asked Wesley under his breath. It was a stage whisper; Willow smiled at the words, and Giles grimaced.

“Essentially,” Wesley said, unable to repress his own smile. Cordelia had snuck over and was waggling her fingers at Connor. “The visions shouldn’t harm him in such a few hours.”

“And the magic stick is actually more like stereoscopic surgery,” Willow said enthusiastically, her hands making vague motions of illustration. “We can use it to look inside her brain while I bind her DNA to Brachen DNA. It’ll be like magical gene therapy.” She was shining.

“I don’t understand any of that,” Angel admitted. Cordelia stole Connor from his arms, and he stuck his hands in his pockets.

“It doesn’t matter, really,” Giles said dismissively. “The effect will be to strengthen Cordelia overall. It should repair any present damage and prevent future damage.”

And not lend itself to ascension, Wesley thought.

“And the pain?” Angel asked.

“Should be lessened greatly,” Wesley said. He smiled tightly against the dragging exhaustion. Trying for reassuring. 

“This isn’t going to,” Angel paused, looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Change her. Physically, I mean.”

“No, certainly not,” Giles said with a gratifying immediacy, picking up one of the books and turning it toward Angel, finger tapping one of the etchings. “The Brachen are very close to a human norm, though she could be able to shift forms in an emergency, and we’re altering her on a genetic level.”

“Wait a minute,” Cordelia said, coming back over. “That word, Brachen. Wasn’t Doyle…”

Wesley swallowed. This might be the sticking point. “Yes, he was half-Brachen.”

Angel looked stricken, and Wesley had to wonder whether he’d forgotten or suppressed the knowledge.

“So I’ll be all green and spiney?” she asked, her voice getting a little higher.

“The change shouldn’t manifest as anything more than heightened strength, speed and resilience,” Wes said, hoping to reassure her. “You _might_ gain the ability to shift into a demonic form, but it’s unlikely.” He paused, fists clenching on nothing. “The important thing is that Doyle was able to withstand the damage caused by the visions, physically and mentally, and that combining your DNA with this type of demonic physiology will not affect your soul.”

“Unlike using a vampire’s demon, as a for instance,” Giles said dryly. He was probably also trying to be reassuring.

Not to mention a Brachen would be an inappropriate candidate for ascension, Wesley thought (though he was careful to keep that thought to himself).

“Okay.” Cordelia shrugged, looked down at Connor who was wriggling a little in her arms. “I trust you with this. I’m just worried, you know?”

“Yes,” Wesley said gently. “I know.”

"And in a way it's fitting," Cordelia said. "I mean, having the visions, it's like he's a part of me, kind of, so adding a little more ..." She shrugged, then smiled a little and touched Wesley's arm. "I guess it is the best choice."

He tried to return her smile, only able to think of how very much she'd changed.

“We should start soon,” Giles said pointedly.

The front doors swung open.

“We’re back,” Fred called.

“And we got dinner,” Gunn added.

Wesley ducked out of the office, found Gunn tipping a large paper sack from his arms to the front counter. Fred like a shadow at his side, something Wesley wasn’t to touch. It was like a lesson in real life, these upcoming months. Save the girl, can’t get the girl. Get the girl, and can’t save her.

“Is that dinner or the spell components?” he asked doubtfully, the doubt itself an affectation, staring fixedly at the grease stains on the bottom of the bag. Caught Fred’s grin from the corner of his eye and very carefully did not watch her carry a second sack into his office.

“This, my man, is the best Italian food you’re gonna find outside of Italy,” Gunn returned proudly, delving into the sack for a Styrofoam container. “You want eggplant or chicken?”

“Chicken, I suppose,” Wes said slowly. Gunn pushed the container toward him, and began unpacking the rest. “Charles, I need to ask you something.”

“Shoot, English.”

Wes just looked at him for a long moment, remembered the future and the look of doubt just before Giles’s arrival. He glanced down, didn’t notice Gunn’s worried look.

“Perhaps we should sit down.”

“What are you telling me, Wes.” He looked frightened, now. Like people do just before you tell them you have cancer. Wes bit his lip. He was doing this all wrong.

“Let’s just.” Wesley stopped, drew Gunn away from the counter as Willow and Giles emerged from the office, heads close in whispered consultation. 

Gunn was patient until they’d reached the hall near the basement door, then refused to go any further.

“What is it,” Gunn asked, low and serious. Wesley had not been the object of that focus since he’d been shot.

“We need you for the spell,” Wes admitted.

Gunn seemed to relax, let out a breath and straightened into his usual slouch. “Yeah, man, whatever you need.”

“No, Charles, we need to give you the visions.” Caught the growing fear. “Temporarily,” he added hastily. “Just for a few hours.”

“Hours,” Gunn said flatly.

“Just until we can take care of Cordelia.”

Gunn watched him for a moment, Wesley too nervous to look away. Then Gunn nodded, smiled again. “Yeah, sure.”

“Sure?”

“You got it.” Held out his hand, and Wesley moved through their ritual with crystalline joy rising in his breast. He’d missed this. “This gonna hurt?”

“It shouldn’t,” Wes smiled. Almost lightheaded with it. “Even were you to have a vision, it wouldn’t cause permanent damage in such a short timeframe.”

“If you say so.” Gunn shrugged, tuned back to the lobby. “C’mon, English, I’m hungry.”

“Yes,” Wesley murmured, following more slowly. He’d forgotten what it was to be trusted so instantly, so absolutely. 

Hard to remember now that it was conditional.

Angel had come out of the office with Connor, and was watching the others eat. Fred was coming down the main stair (she’d changed, pulled her hair back into a braid), and smiled warmly to Gunn when she caught sight of them. They brightened to see one another. Wesley kept walking when Gunn stopped to wait for her, kept walking to stand by Angel.

“You okay?” Angel asked, preoccupied with some snag in Connor’s onesie.

“Yes,” Wesley said evenly. “I talked to Gunn.”

“What did he say?”

“He said yes.” Wesley smiled faintly. “We can begin.”

“Great.” Angel paused, looked over at Wesley to peer at him closely. “You should eat something, then. Have to wait for Willow and Giles, anyway.”

“Yes, of course,” Wes said vaguely, and wandered over to the counter, not seeing Angel’s worried glance.

Willow was on the computer, alternating between spaghetti and the flickering screen. Giles was eating steadily, staring forward at nothing as though in deep thought. Wes retrieved his chicken parmesan and leaned against the counter to eat. The plastic take-out fork felt awkward in his hand, like his fingers had swollen. 

“Where did Cordelia go?” he asked after a moment, aware he should’ve noticed much sooner.

“To the bathroom, I think,” Angel said, somewhat absently.

“For so long?” he asked, beginning to be worried.

“Should we check on her?” Angel asked. Connor seemed to pick up on the rising tension, and began to turn restlessly against Angel’s chest.

“I’ll go,” Wes said, dropping the Styrofoam box to the counter and stepping toward the employee’s bathroom. Angel caught his shoulder.

“Hey, Wes.” Angel was trying for soothing, juggling Connor in the crook of his elbow, and Wesley’s shoulder too-warm under his hand. “We’re taking care of it. You have time to eat.”

“I’ll check on her,” Willow offered brightly, looking very aware that she was eavesdropping.

“Thanks, Willow,” Angel answered for both of them. She swallowed, left quickly, didn’t seem concerned that Giles didn’t notice or move.

Wes listened to her go, unable to look away from Angel. After a moment Angel ducked his head, released Wesley’s shoulder with a last gentle pat. “Go on, Wes,” he said quietly. “Eat your dinner.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he whispered.

“Alright,” Angel said agreeably. “Come sit down?”

Wes just nodded, and followed Angel to the couch in the lobby. Angel sat next to him, very close, pressed against his side. Wes found himself leaning into the touch, and felt a little bit safer.

“Are you up to this?”

“I suppose I have to be.” Wesley smiled, looked down at his hands folded in his lap. “We can’t put this off.”

“No,” Angel agreed. They sat quietly, side by side, until Cordelia eased her slow way out into the lobby.

“Was it a vision?” Wesley said, carefully not asking how she felt.

“No,” she said shakily, managing a trembling smile. “The headaches are worse.” She spoke quietly, looked almost ashamed to admit it, lowered herself to the couch opposite them on shaking hands. Wes had to look away. She’d developed a permanent low-grade shaking in her hands, a sure sign of neurological damage. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, “for telling me.”

She smiled at him, a little stronger now as the pills, whichever combination today, began to take effect. “Is there any point in hiding it?” she asked, barely managing her usual cutting tone.

“No.” He pulled off a return smile, barely. Angel’s free hand went to his knee, offering an anchor. “Not now.”

“Wesley?” Giles, sort of stand-hovering at the edge of the counter as if afraid to intrude. “We need to begin.”

“We’re ready?” he asked, and gave Cordelia what he hoped was a reassuring look.

“Will you be okay?” she asked softly, showing a rare concern. He smiled.

“Everything will be fine,” he said with a very real feeling of almost having completed his purpose. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

* * *

Angel had been Irish, once. Wesley rarely considered Angel’s accent, or anyway his use of that particular American accent that Americans jingoistically interpret as a lack of an accent. Wesley’d had a professor at Oxford who’d also been Irish, once, but who had spent fifteen years in that area of the United States called the Midwest. That professor had sounded like Angel must have in the early twentieth century. Ostensibly American, enough so that he’d routinely been mistaken for an American. But with just a slight broadening of the vowels, an occasional lilt that betrayed his nationality.

Angel had long-since lost that slight hint of foreignness. Wesley felt himself losing it, at times. Knew that if he only stayed in this place long enough (a few hundred years) he would sound as American, as native, as generalizable and reassuringly familiar to them as any other emigrated native of this benighted city.

“Is everything going okay?” Angel asked softly, staying near enough the door that Wesley felt justified in walking over to him. Gunn remained in his corner, staring at Cordelia fixedly. Cordelia was staring at the ceiling, lying utterly still while Giles and Willow moved around her.

“Yes, it’s all going according to plan.” Wes murmured. They were almost touching, Angel’s coat brushing against Wesley’s shirt. “Fred has Connor?”

“Yeah, she’s got him down in your office. Lorne, too.” He shrugged. “Seemed the safest place.”

Wes nodded absently. “You might want to join them.”

Angel smiled his wry smile. “I’ll be fine here.”

Wes raised an eyebrow, but nodded after a moment.

“Wesley, we’re ready,” Giles called. He and Willow were watching him expectantly, and he glanced briefly back at Angel.

“Good luck?” Angel said hesitantly, and smiled.

He couldn’t answer, could only try a last tilt of the head like a confirmation before he turned away.

Wesley took his place beside Willow at the side of Cordelia’s bed. He caught Gunn’s eye (across from Wesley, beside Giles), and they exchanged the same subtle nod. Wesley looked down at Cordelia. “How are you doing?” he asked.

Cordelia’s smile was trembling, brittle. “A little nervous,” she said. “But I’m ready.”

“Excellent.” His smile felt a little realer, though mostly for her sake. It shouldn’t have meant the end of all their planning, that moment. 

The fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the ones they’d all sworn not to mention to her, tightened just a moment before her back arched up off the table. She screamed, strangled on a gasping breath and Willow stumbled back from the table, shocked out of her complacency and Giles was helping him hold Cordelia, his arms pinning her thighs and Giles across from him grasping at her shoulders. Gunn was helping Willow, and even before Cordelia had stilled Angel appeared among them with a prescription bottle and a glass of water in his hands. 

“Take these,” he said before they had her sitting up properly. Her hand went to her temple, shaking like the rest of her body was shaking. This hadn’t happened last time.

“Oh God,” Wesley murmured. Cordelia was bringing the glass to her mouth, slopping water everywhere but she got enough down to swallow. Everyone was concerned with her progress, Gunn back at her side and rubbing her shoulder gently now that Willow could stand on her own. 

“What is it?” Angel asked, as quietly. None of the others had heard.

“She didn’t have this vision the first time,” Wes whispered, knowing Angel would hear. “Someone’s trying to stop this.”

“What did you see,” Gunn was asking quietly. He knew the drill. Giles reappeared with a towel, began to soak up the water. Wesley hadn’t noticed him leave.

“A girl,” Cordelia managed. “She’s a vampire, I think. It’s a school.” Her eyes lifted, sought out Angel as always. “It’s a school play. And she has demons with her.”

“What kind?” Wesley asked. It felt like playing a part, his voice very far away.

“I don’t know,” she wailed, obvious signs of pain marking her face. “They had crests, like those weird owl dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.”

“Okay,” Wes assured her. “That’s good. Those sound like Sci’or, Angel, you and Gunn on this one.” He turned back to Cordelia. “Did you see which school, how much time do we have?”

“None, it’s happening so soon,” she whispered. “The other kids in the audience were wearing patches, on navy uniforms. Like a cross with wheat, maybe?”

“Fred can find that online,” Gunn said quickly.

“Excellent. You can handle this.” Wes smiled briefly. “Beheading’s quickest, or the heart.”

“You’ll be okay?” Angel asked. He knew what this would mean. Gunn hadn’t realized. 

“I’ll be fine.” Smiled again, barely. “Go.”

They ran downstairs, Gunn already calling for Fred. Wes swallowed, took up rubbing Cordelia’s shoulders while she tried to hide the pain, box it away again. 

“Wesley,” Giles said quietly. 

“What?”

“We needed him for the spell.”

“You didn’t really need my help.” Threw Giles a knowing smile. “I’ll take the visions.”

“I don’t think--”

“It’s the same risk Charles was willing to take!” He pushed himself to his feet, worried that Cordelia didn’t seem to hear them. “I won’t be harmed in just a few hours, any more than he would’ve been.”

“It will take more than a few hours, Wesley,” Giles said, face lined with compassion. Willow was uncharacteristically silent, staring at Cordelia with a pale, haunted expression. 

“Yes, I know,” he admitted. Looked down at Cordelia. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no one else.”

“There’s Fred …” Willow suggested hesitantly.

“Absolutely not!” Felt himself grow faint. “I can’t lose her again, she is not to be risked!”

“Again?” Giles asked softly. Wes felt himself swaying on his feet, and forced it all down. 

“I have to do this,” he finally said. “There’s no one else.”

Giles stared at him intently for a long moment. Cordelia had lain back against the pillows with Willow’s help, and was watching them with a certain resigned bewilderment that came in the aftermath of intense pain. After a time, Giles nodded.

“Very well, then.” Giles forced a smile, and Wes felt something in his breast unclench. Giles seemed to study him for a moment more, and the smile became a bit closer to real. “You really have changed,” he murmured, almost too softly. 

Wes ducked his head, didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. “We should get started,” he murmured instead. 

“Yes, right.” Giles paused, seemed visibly to decide to let it pass. “Willow, begin on Cordelia just as soon as I’ve got the visions. I’ll worry about getting them into Wes in my own time.”

“Right,” Willow said, very determined, very focused. Wes almost felt reassured as she began chanting in Latin, her voice steadier than he’d ever heard it. 

Cordelia’s breathing slowed, the lines of pain fading from her face as she grew very silent, very still. She lay as one dead, utterly paralyzed by Willow’s spell. 

The next part would be more difficult. Willow stopped chanting after a moment, seemed to hold her breath until sure Cordelia wouldn’t shake off the paralysis and force them to start again. Then Giles began.

Wesley had known exactly how much of his help they would require, and so had only glanced briefly over this spell. He didn’t listen to the words, just Giles’s voice, and watched the concentration so obvious in his face. It was a good face, strong, handsome with the mark of long years. A face he could trust.

It was the trust that did it, sending him beneath the surface like a diver silk-slipping into a lake, a mountain lake, lucid as the newly-sane. Giles had begun his incantation, Egyptian, and he didn’t even feel it coming. Cordelia arched up off the table, still limp as a coma and Wes could imagine the visions pouring out of her and diving into some deeper recess of his brain.

Giles was still chanting, voice rough now with effort. There was nothing to see, really, and when it actually happened he felt nothing. He knew that something had happened, because Giles’s voice thundered to a crescendo and went abruptly silent, and Wesley felt everything becoming clearer, as one just awakened.

Willow was at work now, and couldn’t be interrupted whatever sudden misgiving Wesley felt. Giles watched her for a moment, then stepped over to Wesley and eased him into one of the plush hotel chairs. Wesley let him, feeling his legs strangely weak and a faint tingling in his hands. But everything was fine. Not what he’d expected at all.

“Are you alright?” Giles whispered. Wesley just nodded, his steady gaze not leaving Willow’s still form. Only her lips moved. Her eyes were black, pupil, iris, sclera, like emptied holes in her too-pale face. 

Giles’ hand was warm on Wesley’s shoulder. The faint tingling had spread up his arms, his legs. Willow was moving now, widdershins around the cushioned table scattering herbs that smoked faintly on contact with bare skin. Wesley watched all of this passively, his head resting against the back of the chair. He felt very tired.

Willow paused suddenly, and a look of almost smugness crept into her empty eyes and crooked smile. Wes was watching her carefully. Couldn’t feel his feet now.

“Wesley?” Giles was saying very quietly into his right ear. He sounded concerned.

There was no physical sign of the change, but Willow turned to Giles with shining eyes, almost glowing, panting lightly with exertion. “It’s done,” she said.

Had it been so much time, then? He couldn’t remember any sense of time passing, other than the slow-creeping numbness. They had said it would be hours. Had it been hours? He was tired.

“I would appreciate another set of eyes,” Giles was saying, and they were moving about Wesley’s chair. “Wesley, can you get up?” Giles asked gently. Wesley turned his head and blinked at the older man a little sleepily.

“I don’t think so,” he tried to say. His lips moved, threading a breath of sound. Giles leaned in closer. Looked worried now.

“Okay, alright.” Giles was trying to sound soothing, but only succeeded in panicked. 

“What is it?” Willow, suddenly afraid. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I’m not sure,” Giles said, voice low, words clipped and impatient. Oh God. Wesley began to worry, in a vague distant way that was more like knowing he should worry. “I can probably … See if he has a copy of the Dornhanm Codex downstairs, would you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Willow said breathlessly, already running for the door. Wesley swallowed, tried to catch Giles’s eye. Rupert’s. He could call the watcher Rupert now. Ex-watcher? Had he been rehired? Wesley frowned, tried to swallow again. “It’ll be okay,” Giles was saying. Rupert was saying. Wes tried to smile. 

Fade out.


	6. To Life Eternal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They deal with the aftermath of the spell, and Wesley forces a confrontation with Angel.

“What did you do to him?”

Angel must have returned. Wesley’s first awareness came with a deep voice and a room temperature hand on his brow. Wesley let his mouth fall open and then closed, smacked his lips like a sleeping child. His eyes wouldn’t open. There really didn’t seem to be another means of communication. Angel’s proximity never changed, and Wesley wasted long moments wishing that he could groan.

“Is he showing any signs of waking?” Giles asked, sounding if possible even more concerned than before.

“Maybe. Can’t tell,” Angel said shortly. He was angry, and smelled faintly of blood and cordite. Gunfire, possibly. Wes twitched the little finger of his left hand, felt a brief surge of satisfaction. Couldn’t remember why he would be lying partly in Angel’s lap.

“It’s very important that we assess his condition,” Giles was saying. “His … mental capacity might have been damaged by the interference.”

“What? What does that mean?” Angel, growling. Wes wondered where the others were, Fred. Tried to feel grateful he hadn’t been left alone. 

“All I’ve been able to determine is that somehow Wesley, by coming back to this time, in no way switched bodies. Do you understand?” And Wes could almost see Angel’s confusion, more quickly made the connection himself. Should’ve known sooner. “It’s like his later memories, his later personality has overwritten the Wesley that you know. Like a cassette tape that’s been recorded over. The old track is still underneath the new track, so the quality of the sound deteriorates with each new recording.”

“A copy of a copy,” Angel said slowly.

“Yes, quite,” Giles said, oddly pleased at Angel’s comprehension. “Only in Wesley’s case, the copying effect has resulted not in a deterioration of quality, but in a reduction of the available space. It’s nothing that would matter normally.” Sounds like restless pacing. “Memory is stored as a form of RNA, and Wesley’s future RNA is in a sense layered over the previous record, so that twice as much space is used.”

“So when you added the visions …”

“Exactly, the process by which the visions interact with the human mind must require a great many more neuronal connections, enough that these newer connections interfered with the brain’s other functions.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Well, no. If we hadn’t removed the visions as quickly as we had …”

“What?” Angel’s hand went still, that preternatural stillness only the undead seem able to manage.

“He would have died,” Giles said quietly. 

Both men were silent for a few long moments. 

“But he’s okay now, right?” Angel asked. Wes felt a surge of impatience, rode it out with little other choice, wished they’d discuss Cordelia’s condition and quickly.

“Yes, he should be.” Could almost see him cleaning his glasses. “Of course we’ll know for certain once he wakes. I just hope--”

Wanted to move. Wanted to tell them that he could move. 

“What?” Angel prodded. His hands were so tight.

“I’m not entirely certain that the memories, the ‘new’ Wesley, couldn’t have been damaged. Even in such a short time –”

“Then why did you, why him?” Angel broke in. He sounded as he hadn’t sounded since Buffy’s death. “Why him?”

“We didn’t know,” Giles said helplessly. “There was no way of knowing how the memories had inhered. I,” And paused for a breath. “As soon as I realized …”

“Yeah.” Recriminating. (Wes thought of Lorne. He could tell them. Angel should know better, Lorne should be nearby. When did Lorne move in, shouldn’t he be living just down the hall? Was that later?) Could almost feel Angel’s stare, a look with nothing but misery in it. “Giles, I can’t, I feel like I lost him once already, you know?”

“I understand,” Giles replied, very quiet and sad. “He’s not at all the happy young man he once was, is he?”

“Yeah,” Angel murmured. “Kinda miss seeing him smile.”

“Well, yes, quite.” Sound like Giles might be cleaning his glasses. Now wishing himself really and truly unconscious. “I find myself somewhat wistful for his days in Sunnydale, myself.”

“I thought you hated him in Sunnydale,” Angel said, echoing the very question in Wesley’s mind with a fairly accurate rendition of Wesley’s own surprise and, frankly, disbelief. Giles coughed.

“He was a bit of a prat.” Though said fondly it still stung. “But very certain, and very bright.”

“He used to fall over a lot,” Angel said as though confessing, and Wesley very deliberately began to make plans to kill them both as soon as he emerged from this wretched in-between state. “Slipped once on a bunch of spilled coffee beans, and apologized for it.” Knew the vampire was smiling, and Giles made a sound like a stifled laugh, and was just empty inside. “And he used to smile. Big, and goofy. Just, lit up the room.”

“What happened?” Softly asked, no pressure. “When did he begin neglecting himself to this degree?”

“He always did, kinda. Whenever there was a translation, or research, he just worked till it was done.”

“Hm. I see.”

“What? What does that mean?” And Angel suddenly sounded defensive, maybe a bit anxious. 

“Nothing, I suppose,” Giles said musingly. “Just something to say while I think the matter over.”

“Oh.” Angel spoke softly, seemed stymied by the explanation, the fact of it, the ease of the offering. Wes very quietly felt his life falling apart. Wondered if he’d wake up this time. “So, what were you thinking?”

“That he really needs someone to take care of him. Or to make sure he takes care of himself.”

“Huh.” Angel was smiling now, Wes could hear it in his voice. “I was kinda thinking the same thing.”

It was intolerable. Died and gone to hell, this time, and with no escape. It was probably the frustration more than anything that woke his sleeping limbs.

“Hey, watch it!” Angel caught unawares, Wes’s left arm, his free arm swung up in a violent arc, Giles cursing and Wes came up off the bed, eyes finally open and gasping like breaking through to the surface. 

“Wes?” Angel asked, eyes anxious even more so than his voice and Wes just blinked at him for a long moment, both wrists held tightly in Angel’s hands between them as though Angel thought he might still take a swing, and in just the relief of being _present_ again Wes slumped back, Angel’s grip the only thing keeping him upright.

“How are you feeling?” Giles asked carefully, remaining a careful pace behind Angel, who hadn’t yet released Wesley’s arms. Wes turned his blinking sleep-stunned gaze toward Giles, meeting his eyes over Angel’s shoulder.

“How is Cordelia?” Wesley asked, feeling something of a familiar roughness in his voice. Its return was almost pleasing after so long an acquaintance. 

“She appears to be fine,” Giles said reassuringly, Angel still watching him carefully, trap that might be ready to spring. Wes shivered, nodded. “She hasn’t had another vision as of yet, but Lorne’s prognosis is very hopeful.”

So Lorne was here. Good. Yet, “I wouldn’t rely on it,” Wes said softly. “His talent can be … misled, by certain forces.”

“Do you think it likely at this time?” Giles had straightened up, one hand moving to adjust his glasses.

“It shouldn’t be possible, not yet,” Wesley allowed. “But it can be done. Lorne isn’t infallible.”

“It’s okay,” Angel said. Wes shifted, meeting Angel’s eyes, and Angel peered at him intently for a long, assessing moment, then carefully releasing him. “We’ll get a second opinion, alright?” Angel smiled encouragingly, that old dopey smile that said he was more concerned for you than for himself. 

Wes had to smile in return as he lowered himself back against the headboard.

Giles shifted next to them, standing uneasily, and Angel was staring at him with a worried expression, and Wes frowned at both of them.

“You were smiling,” Angel said, a bit sheepishly having heard the unspoken question.

“Ah.” Wes’s turn to shift now, not sure what to say. 

“What were you thinking?” Giles asked softly.

“I’m not sure.” Still in this odd confessional mood. Or just now in this odd confessional mood. Time was slipping in its moors, a bit. “I could hear you.”

“What?” Angel, confused.

“When?” Giles, a bit more wary, a bit more worried. “When you were unconscious?”

“I wasn’t,” Wes said breathily. He was tired again, already. “Not entirely. Or not the entire time. It’s been the same since I … arrived.”

“I see.” Giles moved as if to clean his glasses, settled for adjusting the fit.

“I don’t,” Angel said quickly. “See what? What the hell does that mean? Is that a good thing?”

“It might actually be a good sign,” Giles said optimistically, not glancing over at Wesley’s skeptical glare. “If the future personality is that stable, it might not degrade over time.”

“That was a concern?” Wes said weakly, listing to one side. 

“No, hey,” Angel tried, touching Wes’s arm lightly, propping him back up. “It’ll be fine, Giles said. And anyway. I’m sure Willow can figure out a way to make this permanent. Um, if you want it to be. Permanent, I mean.”

“Yes, I rather would,” Wes snapped. “I do _not_ fancy repeating my mistakes, not through ignorance.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Angel said ineffectually, holding up both hands in a familiar plea for stillness, silence, less emotion. 

Wes could only glare at him, choke on the frustration because he would not tell this man (vampire) even why he wouldn’t tell him. Too much to risk.

“I could begin researching methods to stabilize the … merger,” Giles offered hesitantly. Wes steadied himself, drew a calming breath, then another.

“Yes, thank you. And,” he added quickly, as Giles turned away. “Could you send Cordelia up please? Or help me downstairs? I fear I’m not fit to walk.”

“Or sit, for that matter,” Angel muttered, reaching out to steady Wesley as he swayed again.

“Yes, absolutely,” Giles said. “I’ll ask her to come straight up.”

“Thank you,” he said again, unable to think of anything more pressing as he watched Giles stride easily to the door. Caught himself watching for signs of stiffness or age, and glanced away. And then it was just the two of them.

“You hungry?” Angel asked after a moment, apparently feeling the strained atmosphere even with his complete lack of social skills.

“You aren’t going to start in on that again, are you?” 

“Yes,” Angel said with an almost comical firmness. “You need to eat, Wes. You’ve eaten maybe three times (“Four,” Wes corrected absently.) alright, four times since you … woke up, or time-traveled. Whatever. The point is, you’re human. And humans need food.” All said very sincerely, Angel peering intently into his eyes without shame or fear or the least remorse. Nothing Wesley had become used to seeing in those eyes.

“Angel, I can’t …” Couldn’t maintain the gaze, looked down at his own hands nervous one holding the wrist of the other in his lap. “I can’t deal with you being nice to me,” he ground out, voice as rough as ever though with emotion in this time.

“What?” Innocent. Had to remember that this Angel was innocent, that this Wesley was. “What do you mean? Wes?”

Is it the trauma of the encounter with death, or the ongoing experience of having survived it that haunts the longest? Every story is a double telling that oscillates between a crisis of death and a crisis of life. This time Wes stared at Angel with life-haunted eyes.

“I haven’t told you everything,” he began. “About what happens. Or, about what happened. In the other future.”

“Is this going to get complicated?” Angel asked plaintively. “I never really understood the movies.”

Brief memory of watching the trilogy with Gunn and Angel, Cordelia sleeping through the second and third. Bitterly disappointed when she missed the bits in the Wild West. 

“A bit complicated, yes.” And he stalled out. Couldn’t say the words. His hand crept to his unscarred throat.

“You can tell me,” Angel said, all seriousness now. Every now and then he dropped the mask. Every now and then he cared.

“It’s, I don’t think.” He stilled himself, centered on a breath or a thought. His voice was eerily calm when he continued. “I thought the prophecy was genuine,” he explained, watching Angel. “So I tried to save Connor.”

“Well, that’s good.” Angel said. He didn’t see. Not yet. “Saving Connor is always the right move. We talked about this.”

“Except I failed.” Tried very hard not to laugh. “Holtz took Connor to a hell dimension (Angel’s eyes went wide,) and raised him to hate you (face twisting with pain or anger) and when he came back aged eighteen he tried to kill you and destroy the.”

“Enough!” The words came out like a roar, rough with pain and Angel staggered back from the bed, Wes, watching him, still too calm. He was in shock, he thought, and Angel still shaking his head like the future might change. 

“And it might happen again,” Wes said implacably, voice rising over Angel’s stifled moan. “It might not be me, this time, but the future might not be so easily changed. Fred, or Gunn.” He paused. “Or Cordelia. You survived me betraying you. What about them?”

Angel fell back into the armchair nearest the door, still shaking his head in tiny little movements that denied even Wes’s existence. Wouldn’t look at him. Wes couldn’t stop looking. Tear it all apart.

“You hated me, or you will hate me. Tried to kill me. Justine slit my throat and took the baby, and you smothered me in my hospital room. Would you have stopped if I’d flat-lined, I wonder?”

“Stop it,” Angel whispered, glancing up at him with wounded eyes. Black and deep, tunnels to the center of him. 

“But it’s the truth.” The words came too carefully now. “A year from now I’ll be running my own business sleeping with Lilah hating myself as much as I hate the world with Justine in a cage I built in my closet.” He was shaking.

“Who the hell is Justine?” Angel ground out.

“One of Holtz’s groupies. He has groupies, you know. His intrepid vampire hunters.” 

“Are you crying?” Angel asked suddenly, finally looking up.

“No.” Wes touched the wetness on his cheeks. “Well, perhaps.”

“Well, stop it. You’ll get dehydrated.” Angel stood slowly, and moved deliberately to the bed, handed Wes his glass of water and a tissue and sat beside him not as if nothing had happened but as if he hadn’t really thought this through. Wes took the water gratefully, drained it in one long pull.

“This is a bit surreal,” Wes said, placing the glass back into Angel’s obliging hands. “I’d rather expected violence. Yelling, if nothing else.”

Angel shook his head, and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Wes waited, almost holding his breath. 

“I don’t know what to think about this,” Angel began, examining the bed’s coverlet fiercely. “I mean, it hasn’t happened. And maybe it won’t happen, so I shouldn’t blame you for it or just wait for it to come crashing down on us …”

“So what should you do?” Both hearing the unspoken ‘what should I do?’

“Would you stop crying?” Angel snapped.

“Sorry, I don’t seem to be able to help it.” Wesley shrugged, and dabbled with the tissue a bit more. It was already sodden.

“Look, I don’t hate you.” Still a bit huffy, but the sentiments were welcome. “I just don’t know what to think. I don’t know if I know you anymore.”

Wesley swallowed. Waited for the rest.

“I’m not sorry you came.” And for the first time since Wes had woken in this strange hell, Angel’s eyes were clear, and he meant what he said. “Hey, come here,” Angel murmured, and pulled Wes to him so that he was laid awkwardly across the vampire’s lap, face pressed against the front of Angel’s shirt and it soaked up the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.

“I am sorry to be a bother,” Wesley said into Angel’s flat belly. 

“No bother,” Angel said, voice easier now, lighter. As if he’d made a choice. 

They were both quiet for a few minutes, until Wesley’s tears stopped, and he sat back up in the bed, feeling mildly embarrassed but still everything was as though through thick cotton batting. Could barely feel it at all. 

“Thank you,” he said politely, accepting the fresh tissue from Angel, who looked faintly concerned now but prepared to let it drop.

“How do you feel?”

“Much better, thank you.” Heard the repetition too late, and shrugged.

“You don’t have to keep thanking me,” Angel said, twisting his mouth into a wry little grin. 

“I know.” Wes paused, poked at the cotton batting. “I want to.”

“Then you’re welcome.” Angel was smiling now, a bit. 

“Hey, Wes!” And speak of the devil – Cordelia burst through the door, the picture of health.

He smiled nevertheless, her grin irresistible as always. Giles followed her through the door at a much more sedate pace, Angel stepping back quickly as she flung herself at the bed.

“Cordy,” he yelped, throwing up his hands to fend her off as she came in too fast for a hug. The moment thoroughly broken, and Angel had retreated to a corner to watch. 

“You’re okay,” she was saying repeatedly, her voice thick with tears. After a moment she leaned back and just looked at him, until he began to feel a bit nervous. Then she hit him. “You big jerk! You could have died, you idiot.”

“I didn’t?” he tried, and immediately cringed before her glare. 

She replied, but he let the familiar words wash over him like a warm gentle wave. Everything still felt less than resolved, but Angel was, he hadn’t … It had felt like being offered forgiveness, for a moment.


	7. Their Foolish Games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People are saved, misunderstandings are had.

The conviction that Cordelia had been saved led to an almost carnival-like atmosphere. Everyone seemed lighter, relieved. They came into Angel’s bedroom one by one and in small groups, milling about, to touch Wesley’s hand, grinning awkwardly, full of praise and love and everything Wesley had thought he’d been craving.

But god it hurt.

The desire to live necessitates imagining a future, imagining that you will continue to live and to an extent imagining some form of progress, an ideal future. Assuming that life continues _and gets better_. So what then comes of knowing your future?

“I need to get out of here,” he said to himself. Angel was still looming in the far corner of the room, but was still the only one who heard him. 

“Yeah, some fresh air might help,” Angel said, misunderstanding as always. Wesley was helped to his feet by strong but careful hands, and half-carried downstairs. Gunn was just returning with even more takeout, Fred following him like a moon around its planet, and Cordelia was the center of attention holding Connor and grinning broadly, her real grin, the lines of pain erased from her skin like they’d never been.

“My man,” Gunn said to him, smiling, holding his hand out for their ritual handshake. Wesley went through the motions with pain like a bubble around his heart. “How you holding up?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said. There were falsehoods in that statement. The mood was so high, so effervescent with relief after months of worry. He didn’t want to bring it down.

Some part of him couldn’t help it.

“We end world peace,” he told no one while they ate Chinese straight from the red and white cartons, only Fred eschewing chopsticks for a plastic spork and Wes fenced safely between Angel and Giles on the couch. Giles choked on his lo mein, but the conversation eddied away from them.

Angel was quiet, not eating, eyes fixed on Connor in his bassinet though speaking to Wesley. “Should we have?”

“I’m not sure,” Wes said musingly, though he’d thought about it (many times) before. “Peace at the cost of free will? Begs the question: does free will cause conflict, war, racism, rape, murder.” He’d picked up a piece of cashew with a delicate movement of his chopsticks, fell silent to stare at it without seeing.

“Would you do it again?” Giles asked.

“Yes,” he said immediately, fiercely.

“It’s enough,” Angel said.

“It has to be,” Giles said, a lighter echo.

“Does it?” he asked listlessly. “I think I should leave.”

His intention was harder to misunderstand this time.

* * *

They settled him in one of the spare rooms when he refused to take over Angel’s space again. He desperately wanted to rest, but was alone for mere minutes before they started to come around

“What’s going on with you, man?” Charles, beginning to speak before he’d even entered the room, his voice tight with concern that sounded more like anger.

Wesley still felt that strange since of dislocation, and hoped that progress on the spell Giles had mentioned would come quickly. Through his swimming, nauseating headache, he muttered, “I just need some time.”

“Time for what?” Charles sat on the edge of the bed, rocking the mattress slightly. Wesley’s stomach turned at the motion, and Charles put a hand on his arm as he swallowed back bile.

Wesley breathed carefully for a moment. “I don’t think I can talk about it.”

Charles frowned at him, looked down. 

“Is it us?” Fred, her timid voice emerging from the hallway in disembodied form. He looked toward the door, couldn’t see her, wondered if he were being haunted.

“It isn’t you,” he reassured the ghost. “I just need to … I need to think.”

“About what?” Charles demanded. “About not coming back?”

“Of course not!” he said quickly. “No, of course I’ll return, as quickly as I can.”

“Man, you said anything that endangered the group, anything at all—”

He had said that, hadn’t he? God, what an arrogant ass he’d been. “I swear, I won’t be gone long enough to endanger anything.”

“Then what is it?” Fred asked, finally peeking around the door jamb. “If you’re coming back, why leave at all?”

Had he attacked her while possessed? Had he revealed himself to be dangerous to her? Was she afraid of him at this point? Everything was swirling together, and Wesley couldn’t remember.

“Maybe we should stop bugging Wes,” Angel said, stepping up behind her.

The room was feeling very crowded. Wesley must have reacted, though he couldn’t notice any of the smaller changes to his body as it betrayed him. Angel frowned, and backed up a step so that he was merely looming in the doorway instead of over Wesley’s head. Fred skittered back behind him, as if by instinct. Charles didn’t move, but Wesley still felt as if he could breathe.

“He’s still talking about leaving,” Charles said, snitching to teacher.

Angel looked very solemn, and Wesley felt a pain in his heart that he didn’t think about. “You’re the boss,” Angel said, still trying to catch Wesley’s gaze.

It didn’t make any sense, but with Angel’s permission Wesley suddenly felt as if he were the one being abandoned. 

“You’ll fall over before you get out of the city,” Charles said, trying to sound as if he were merely teasing.

“I won’t leave until Giles completes his spell.” It was the best compromise he could come up with.

“Promise?” Fred murmured, still shielding herself with Angel’s bulk.

“I promise,” Wesley said. His voice was getting smaller. 

“You okay, man?” Charles said. He was very far away. Wesley wondered when he’d gotten so very far away.

Angel made a concerned sound, and it was the last thing Wesley heard before fading into darkness.

* * *

“There’s no reason it shouldn’t work,” Giles was saying, and Wesley thought he should be listening but wasn’t sure he was listening.

“That sounds kinda … sketchy,” Angel said. Connor burbled, and Wesley imagined he could see Angel bouncing the infant in his strong arms. 

“The principle is sound,” Giles said defensively. “I admit, this is not a case of possession, but the concept is very similar and Wesley’s future self is very like an invading spirit.”

“That’s a little harsh,” Angel said, sounding almost protective. “And shouldn’t Wes get to decide?”

Yes, Wesley thought, his should be the deciding vote.

And he thought about it for a moment. Thought about returning to the man he had been. Naïve, certainly. But happier. The bittersweet ache of his crush on Fred would be a welcome pain after what he’d been through. Would have been through, now.

That’s when the solution came to him. He would have to retain this knowledge. It wasn’t just his duty, more like a moral imperative to prevent the horrors to come.

The thought filled him with that horrible, hollow weight. But he fought through it. He would never have done enough.

“You found a spell?” he asked, still unable to open his eyes. His voice was a small thing. 

Angel jumped to hear it, and leaned over him. Wesley felt a frisson of fear and joy and lust and mostly the fear at having Angel so close above him.

“You awake in there?” Angel asked.

Wesley managed to twitch an eyebrow. 

“Wesley, can you open your eyes?” Giles was asking, but it sounded very far away.

“I’m not sure he can,” Angel said.

“We might have to proceed,” Giles said, and Wesley felt a great sense of relief as he again faded into the black.

* * *

He would never be able to describe it properly later when everyone asked. 

In the blackness he felt a shape, or saw a shape, or maybe heard a shape in the endless dark and it approached and he felt very small, almost beneath notice as something inconceivably large turned its immense attention toward him.

He cringed, or felt that he cringed, or his soul wanted to cringe and so projected such an affect into the void.

The shape said nothing, thought nothing, projected nothing. From it he received the merest impression of a vast, gargantuan being, formless to his sight, a deep, impenetrable well into which his gaze was drawn like light into a black hole, forcibly drawn, pulled forward and down (if this place had directions, if it had a forward and a down, if it was a place) and he felt the pull of it at the core of his very being, as if something had shot a hook into his chest and was drawing forth his very self- 

-and the shape, from which he could still feel nothing, just that awful attention, just that awful sensation of being perceived, of having been perceived, drew him in and was around him and he was within it-

-and somehow in that endless black there were-

-stars 

And in the distance he could hear

chanting

and in the distance he could feel the pull

and Wesley incontrovertibly believed in the immortal soul having been provided more than enough proof for any man’s skepticism and the dangers of its absence to the demon that created what men called a vampire and his determination to follow Angel with his soul had altered the natural course of his life and his own soul

wound

slowly

down

* * *

He returned to life to hope to himself with a massive gasp for air and he’d been lying flat on his back but opened his eyes to find himself sitting upright, suddenly, no in-between sitting up motion just flat then upright his hand was grasping at his heart and 

“Wesley?”

It was Giles’s voice. Giles was here to help. Giles had saved Cordelia, and was trying to save him.

He breathed for a moment. His heart beneath his hand was hammering like it wanted to find a way out of (through) his chest and he closed his eyes and sucked down a breath, another breath.

“You okay?” Angel asked. His voice sounded far away.

Wesley breathed. Coughed. Felt a hand on his shoulder and forced his eyes open. 

Giles remained where he must have been for the duration of the spell. His hands were wet with blood, his lips stained with it. Wesley stared at him. His eyes felt like they were very wide. There was a goat lying on the floor between them. It was very dead.

“Where did we get a goat?” he asked hoarsely.

Angel forced a sigh of relief, and Wesley looked to Willow, who smiled a little and waved her hand at him, just the wiggle of her fingers. 

“Do you remember what’s happened?” Giles asked, sounding very solemn.

Wesley cleared his throat. His heart was slowing, but his chest still felt oddly sore.

Angel took a step forward, anxiety drawing his heavy brows together. Wesley wondered for a moment where everyone else was, and how the three had decided who should be here.

“I think I’m alright,” Wesley said slowly. His voice was thin, and rough. He coughed again, and Angel rushed forward with a glass of water.

“Here, we thought you might need this,” he said, picking up Wesley’s hand and wrapping his fingers around the glass.

Wesley stared at him while he did it, mouth hanging open slightly. “Um, thank you.” He took a sip, and at the feel of wetness on his lips tipped up the class and drank the whole thing in three long gulps. 

“But are you…” Angel couldn’t finish the thought, looked to Giles, who was trying to clean his hands with a paper napkin. Little shreds of napkin came off and clung to the drying blood.

“Why a goat?” Wesley asked, bemused.

“It required a substantial sacrifice,” Willow said brightly, sounding almost enthusiastic in a scholarly way.

“Yes, well,” Giles said, staring down at his hands. “It’s done, now.”

“You think it’s stable,” Wesley asked. He was feeling … he still felt tired, amazingly tired, but … steady in a way he hadn’t before. But still, some reassurance would be nice.

Giles and Angel exchanged a look, and Willow was biting her lip. 

“It certainly should be,” Giles finally said. His brow was creased and he wasn’t meeting Wesley’s eyes. “The spell we, I, that we used, it isn’t, that is. Should you begin to deteriorate again …”

“Which spell?” Now that his head was clearer, he found himself extremely aware of the dead goat, and the blood. Magic that required a sacrifice was powerful, but inevitably dark, and he had to wonder if he was worth it.

Giles smiled awkwardly. “ _Adligo animus_.”

Wesley nodded. A variation on the spell used to return Angel’s soul, and bind it to Angelus’ form. His head felt steady on his neck. He flexed his fingers, and felt them flexing, felt the air on his skin and the sheets covering his legs. “Good choice.”

“Thanks,” Willow said brightly. Giles didn’t say anything.

* * *

Things seemed to get back to normal. 

Wesley rested for a few days. He felt fine, suddenly, and became restless almost immediately but allowed himself to be confined to bed where the others could fuss. He wouldn’t lie and say he wasn’t enjoying the attention, the constant stream of approval and even something that felt like love. 

Something about it also made his skin itch.

Giles and Willow left the day after their last spell, both apologetic and seeming impolitely relieved to be on their way. Wesley had to wonder what was going on in Sunnydale at this time, couldn’t quite remember what had happened or when. Even the stabilized version of his brain hadn’t paid enough attention to Buffy’s life to be able to remember now the sequence of it and the events that had led to her death and resurrection, and what would come after. 

(And part of Wesley remembered he still had that beautiful dagger Angel had brought him from his grieving retreat, and the way his intense and ongoing jealousy of Angel’s every other relationship had lightened for a moment, holding the shining steel in his hands.)

(Another part of him remembered holding a different knife, standing in a pouring rain, watching Angel comforting his torturer.)

The day after that, Wesley had pretended to feel weaker than he was, and after Angel had become thoroughly distracted training Cordelia in her new strength and everyone else had gone to bed or gone for food or just gone, he’d lost track of Lorne again, Wesley snuck out of the hotel and bought a few supplies and checked with a few sources, and went hunting.

He knew where Holtz was holed up. He hadn’t known, at this point in his past, and wouldn’t have done anything about it if he had. In his past, he hadn’t always understood the need for decisive action.

He thought Holtz had probably recruited Justine by this point, but if he hadn’t, or even if he had, Justine by herself had never been a genuine threat. None of his followers had been. Cut the head off the snake, and the rest would wither.

Just after 2AM he set up in an alley near Holtz’s location, hiding his bike behind a dumpster and climbing a fire escape for a better view. As part of his recruitment drive, Holtz took his minions vampire hunting. Wesley remembered in the past, a few weeks from now, tracing their movements through the increasing absences in relatively stable vamp communities. They didn’t hunt just the reckless, the dangerous, the killers. They hunted anything nonhuman. And in certain circles, that made them very easy to find.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, a group of men, ragged, exhausted but exuberant, scuffled past the mouth of the alley. Wesley watched them go by, watched the silence for a few moments, then an older man, graying hair, wearing a large, concealing coat, strode after them. 

Holtz.

There’s no such thing as a silencer. Not really. The sound of a gunshot is unbelievably loud, hits the ear with what seems like palpable force, sets your head ringing. A suppressor alleviates some of that force, but the gunshot will not be silenced. Merely lessened. In effect, this changes the sharp crack to the pop of fireworks. Still loud, but, in certain parts of LA, worth ignoring.

So when Wesley raises his gun and steadies his aim using the railing on the fire escape and puts one bullet in Holtz’s head and three in his body as its falls, the shots sound just like a string of fire crackers going off.

By the time the group of men walking ahead have stopped, and questioned what they heard, and thought to wonder where Holtz had gone, Wesley had pulled the pins on two grenades. He threw them as the first man approached the body, voice raised in alarm, the others running up to join him, and Wesley turned away and shielded his head, not watching them die. 

After a moment he crawled carefully back down the ladder. He’d protected his ears, but his head felt oddly fragile on his shoulders as he approached the remains of Holtz and Holtz’s men. One was moaning, and Wesley shot him. Another was quiet but nearly unscathed, so Wesley shot him as well. 

The others were in pieces.

Wesley hadn’t seen a woman among them, wasn’t sure Justine should be here or maybe it was too soon for Justine to be here. 

Soon the air would fill with sirens. Not quickly. Even with the sound of explosions, any 911 call would elicit a sluggish response, at best. Sometimes no one answered those calls at all. Wesley jogged to Holtz’s warehouse, shot out the lock, made his way through empty sleeping quarters and to the empty basement and to Sahjhan’s vase. With shaking hands he wrapped it in a blanket, stuffed the bundle in a canvas sack, and raced back to his bike just as the first faint sound of sirens split the night.

He remembered how hard it had been to find things lost at the bottom of the ocean. Let Sahjhan share that fate. 

Connor was prophesied to kill the demon, but Wesley found he really didn’t care about prophesies any more.

* * *

He crept back into the hotel just before dawn, and immediately into a shower to remove the scents of blood and salt and cordite. Angel poked his head in at some point while Wesley was in the shower, just standing in the shower with the warm water drumming down on his skull, and asked, “You up early?” and Wesley lied and said, “Yes, out in a minute,” and Angel was gone by the time he did get out of the shower. He dressed slowly and came downstairs as Angel brought out a plate of eggs with a look on his face that squeezed something in Wesley’s heart.

“Hungry?” Angel asked, shoving the plate into his hands.

“Yes, thanks,” Wesley said, struck suddenly by the memory of being invited to stay for breakfast after a night of work when he’d been so alone and so lonely that it had seemed more a benediction than a plate of eggs. 

“We didn’t wake you when we got back, did we?” Angel looked apologetic, nervous somehow. 

“No,” Wesley said honestly. “Didn’t notice a thing. Was it a vision?”

“Her first one since, you know.” Angel was bouncing with energy, and Wesley thought the others must have gone straight to bed, leaving the vampire to jitter and fidget out his post-battle high. 

“How was it?” Wesley asked through a mouthful of eggs, suddenly ravenous.

“No pain.” Angel grinned. “It was brilliant, well, like a headache, I guess, but she said it didn’t last, and she fought alongside us and Wes, she was brilliant.”

“Who stayed with Connor?”

“Fred. She’s asleep now, and Connor’s still sleeping.” Angel looked down. “Things are going so well, Wes, and I …”

He couldn’t seem to finish the thought, and Wesley couldn’t find it in him to say anything encouraging. 

The romance with Cordelia was next, he remembered. And without Cordelia’s ascension, and Angel’s summer in a box in the ocean, Wesley supposed they might have an easier time of it.

Reaching past his heart, Wesley managed, “It would be safe to, um, start something new.”

Angel brightened. “Yes, exactly.” He paused for a moment. “Do you know, did anything in the future…”

Wesley managed a smile, though it was probably a sorry effort. “Things were different. Or would have been different, I suppose.”

“So you think there’s a chance?”

Wesley knew this was coming. He would be able to leave in a few days, and even if Angel felt emboldened he would never make a move so quickly. And Groo should throw a spanner in the works soon enough. He could be well out of town by then, and not have to witness them falling in love.

“There’s absolutely a chance,” he said, and went back to his eggs, which had gone cold.


	8. This Bloody Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiny bit of Angel's pov, and Wesley's road-trip.

It's like Wes will do whatever it takes, but sometimes the situation just isn't fixable.

He just tears himself apart trying to fix it anyway. He's truly heroic in that way.

Angel only realizes this after he’s left them.

It's easy to be a hero if everyone's always telling you that you are, if your choices consist of saving the innocent victims and killing the bad guys, black and white. Operating in the gray is much harder. Lilah had recognized that, Angel supposed, in this future that wouldn’t happen. 

The thing about Wes is the sheer bloody cussedness of the man. When Angel knew him in Sunnydale he’d deserved the crack about screaming like a woman. And he hadn’t been much better in LA, at least not at the beginning. 

But things started to go bad, and Angel was strong and near indestructible, and Gunn when he joined them was fast and almost as strong. So it was Wesley that was getting hurt. Not that you’d ever know it. And a lot of that might have been the British stiff upper lip thing, except he’d never been stiff upper lip about being scared, or startled. So the only difference in the two situations lay in the pain. 

And Angel watched the injuries mount, and grow worse until he left them and returned only to find Wes in the hospital with a hole in his gut and when confronting him over some damn book discovered that Wesley never complained about pain, the real pain. Would never mention it if immediate medical attention weren’t required, probably not even then if he weren’t so damn practical. 

And put together with the brief mentions of his father, the fact that he either never called home or became depressed after calling, and some things about this man began to make sense.

Wes left them on a Wednesday. After Giles and Willow had finished their research, and cast some sort of spell on Wesley, and then gone back to Sunnydale, Wes had rested for a few days. He spent the time writing out a list of names and dates that would be (would have been) significant, translating passages they would need. It seemed like normal Wes behavior. Angel had thought he was resting, and eating finally, and getting better. The thing was, the better Wes got, the more scared he smelled. 

Angel had been keeping track of Wes’s scent for years – frightened at first, of Angel himself, of everything really; then grateful, so grateful, almost pathetic with it, though it felt mean to think of it now; then loving, toward Cordy, toward Gunn, but most of all toward Angel. And Angel had really come to count on that love. It was a steady love, only growing over the years; with a bitter edge, after he’d left them alone. But after he’d come back, and been forgiven, that love grew deeper, and richer with the bitterness, more complex but more sure because of it. Like Wes has seen his worst and hadn’t fled. Had only loved him more. 

And so Angel hadn’t thought he’d ever lose it. So he’d never done anything about it. He had time, he thought. 

But then Wes woke up wrong one day. And he smelled like fear again, or bitterness. And Angel couldn’t smell love anymore. Just the fear. And even when Wesley said that things were different, and that there was finally a chance for them, the smell hadn’t changed, and Angel had hesitated again, like the idiot he was.

Maybe a week later, Wes had packed up a couple of bags and roared away on his ridiculous motorcycle. Angel still thought the hog suited Wesley about as well as a feather boa would suit a goat, but he’d looked very steady and certain as he rode off into the proverbial sunset – well, sunrise, actually, he’d ridden east.

Angel had watched him leave, with Connor in his arms, and had known he couldn’t follow.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” he asked of no one in particular.

“Of course he will,” Cordelia said firmly. “We’re his family.” 

But Angel thought again about the phone calls Wesley never made to his parents, and the smell of fear he’d almost forgotten smelling on his friend, and worried that ‘family’ wouldn’t be a good enough reason.

* * *

Wesley drove his motorcycle through the desert in a rustling wind. What is a rustling wind, exactly? There were no tumbleweeds in the desert. Wrong time of year. Wind roaring, ocean-roaring though constant, strong like that and he drove ever eastward. Sun setting behind him stretching his shadow long and wavering thin before him. Thought about time in an abstract way, thought about a future though mostly about a past. He’d failed before. He’d fail again. Nothing for it. But sink luxuriously into examining the tenses, the way the English language peculiar among the Indo-European language group clustered its words together in contractions, half-words, ‘he had’ sounding precisely like ‘he would.’ Future and past melded together. 

This wasn’t forever. The others were safe enough for now, he’d seen to that, and he would be back before the next major disaster. He just needed to finish it. Before it started. He didn’t have a plan, exactly. The plan was just to keep going, keep moving until he’d fixed his mistakes; like a shark, he had an intuition, if he stopped moving he’d drown. 

He hadn’t. Thought. He hadn’t told the others. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them, exactly. Maybe he didn’t trust himself. He needed to remember who he was, in this timeline. He needed to reconcile what he remembered with what he’d become. And he needed some distance from Angel to manage it.

Where to begin. Possibly Phoenix, Arizona. Riding past a warehouse in Estella, not so far from downtown, where he planned to visit a specialist herbal shop, he heard a woman’s sharp scream, turned down a narrow street that seemed narrower in the dark. He killed a Najakot there, a large demon that looked like nothing more than a gigantic spider, and watched the woman it had been terrorizing run for safety without so much as a thank you.

In a way, that was a new beginning for him. He’d expected a thank you, once. After he’d failed Buffy so badly, tried to remake himself into a demon hunter, someone he could be proud of. Spent the last of his money on leathers and the new bike. Drove straight through to LA in pursuit of a Kungai he’d been tracking the last time he was in Phoenix. And learned definitively that he hadn’t changed. He hadn’t changed at all. 

Now, watching that woman run as much from him as from the spidery demon, Wesley realized something. Along the way, though at what point he hadn’t realized at the time, he’d stopped doing this for someone else. For thanks, or praise, or attention from his father, or from Angel. At some point, he’d started doing this for himself.

That wasn’t quite enough of a realization to make him return home, but it was enough to have him thinking of the hotel as a home to return to. It was a beginning.

* * *

He was parked just inside an alley in central El Paso, near the Mexican border and closer to a cemetery, his legs stiff-braced against the weight of the bike. Just over the border into Texas, he’d gotten a call from Cordelia. 

He’d kept his cell phone, in case they needed help, only for Cordy to start calling with visions she’d had about him. Either merging her with a Brachen demon had extended her range, which seemed unlikely, or her range had expanded to include anyone she considered family, wherever they were. It hurt too much to think about the second possibility, but it was too worrying to think about the first. 

The phone call had been brief – because he’d been unwilling to talk, for fear she might share something personal and gush about her new relationship with Angel, not because she hadn’t wanted to talk to him – and had led him to this street, just south of the largest cemetery in a city across the border from another city famous, or infamous, for its high rate of murders and disappearances. Wesley had the uneasy thought that most of those disappearances might have supernatural explanations. 

It was just before dark. The sun was low in the sky, and he’d noticed that in the desert air the sky was clear, so clear, and as the sun sank lower the sky washed the most delicate shade of eggshell blue, just a little lighter to the west and the sun a small, orange smear just above the trees. As the sun sank lower, that shade of blue got darker, and darker, becoming purple to the east. The shadows deepened beneath the few trees that shaded this part of the cemetery. 

It was an odd space – large, and sprawling, centered on a lush green rectangle that must guzzle water, with a dozen or so oak trees and a drive that looped elegantly through the stately markers. Beyond that rectangle, the remainder of the cemetery, the larger part of it, was hard, sunbaked, sandy, marked by jaggedly drawn roads; the headstones were smaller, or broken, or missing, and the few scattered trees did little to protect the scorched earth. 

He checked the directions he’d scribbled down one last time, put down the kickstand, slung his new shotgun over one shoulder, put a few stakes in the pockets of his leather jacket, and went hunting.

He hadn’t exactly planned on hunting anything on the way. He had needed supplies, as much of an armory as he could afford, and he’d had a vague thought of returning to his old (new?) way of making money – before he’d started his own agency and begun taking clients and hiring men, he had (he would?) scavenge from the bodies of demons, and among the nests of the undead. He just hadn’t expected to get started this soon, or because of a vision. Somehow he’d thought himself beyond the reach of the Powers That Be.

The green portion of the cemetery had a wall around it, and shrubbery to disguise the wall. In the northeast corner of the rectangle he found a cluster of three or four trees, a dozen or so gravestones, and a coven in the process of attempting to summon a demon.

There were six of them, evenly spaced in a circle around a sigil drawn in what looked like blood. Wesley crept closer, using the scant cover and the darkness to his advantage. His heart was thrumming in his chest, his hand steady on the grip of one gun. He suddenly felt awake, fully present in this body, in a way he hadn’t felt since Illyria had torn a hole through space and time.

One of the hooded figures raised both arms, and the chanting got louder. He couldn’t tell from the ritual what they were summoning, but he really didn’t want to find out the hard way. Wesley took a step forward, aimed carefully, and fired a silver-clad bullet through the head of the nearest cultist.

The sound of the gunshot split the relative silence, and the chanting cut off abruptly as the body crumpled and one cultist screamed, and two others turned and ran. Wesley shot another figure, three bullets to center mass, as the two remaining drew swords from beneath their cloaks. He very much had an impression of having brought the uncivilized weapon to this fight, and grinned at the thought. Whatever the cultists saw in his expression, one dropped his sword and backed away; the other stepped forward, and Wesley shot him.

He’d learned a few things in the future that never would be, and ruthless efficiency was a lesson he didn’t intend to forget.

Reloading, he noticed the three runners had scattered, and he took off after the one he could still see. The man dropped his cloak and was climbing over the wall between this part of the cemetery and the rest, crashing through the thick bushes, and Wesley was sprinting after him. 

Nearly skidded through a pool of blood, quick glimpse of an eviscerated body (a sacrifice?) that he would’ve stopped to help except. Righted himself and went on, dodging a collection of decorative statuary and several headstones, flinging himself over the wall, and catching sight of the running man. His heart was pounding. God he was scared. Still, even after everything. Maybe for the first time in a while. He couldn’t remember when he’d last feared death, and suddenly, here, he felt alive. 

The man’s footsteps were loud on the hard packed dirt, and Wesley thundered after him. The other man wasn’t a runner, and Wesley had been ill or injured or what have you by the trip through time but if his body didn’t remember being a runner then his brain did, and he was gaining on the cultist. Within a few yards, then a few feet, then he tackled the man. 

They both went down heavily, Wes hitting the man hard and rolling over him. He ended up on his back, limbs splayed out on the hard earth. Breathe. 

“What the hell do you want?” All too human-sounding, frustrated and afraid. Wesley felt his teeth grating, bit his lip and rolled unsteadily to his feet, firing three shots. 

The man made a small, shocked sound, and then fell, twitching slightly. 

There were two others still out there. Wesley looked about the cemetery, trying to spot any movement. There was nothing. The night seemed very quiet now. 

Wesley holstered his gun, knelt down, and rummaged through the man’s pockets. He found a wallet, removed the cash and the man’s ID. Harold Remming. Not a name made infamous in magical circles, so this was probably his first time trying something this big. Wesley shook his head, partly pitying and partly cursing the man for a fool. He tossed the wallet, pocketed the cash, and jogged back to the wall dividing the different parts of the cemetery.

It was harder to get over the wall from this direction, but with a little scrambling he made it over, landing badly in the tattered bushes. Limping now, he checked the pockets of the other men, finding more money, and a gift card to Starbucks, but among the licenses no one he knew or had heard of. There was a time, would be a time, when he kept track of such things. He didn’t like to think that he’d missed a demon-summoning cult – assuming they’d been successful the first time (the last time?) without his interference. Staring down at the sigil scrawled in blood, he wondered if he would even have noticed, and if this place was also sitting on a hell mouth, like Sunnydale and Cleveland – one more loose demon probably wouldn’t add that much to the body count. They hadn’t included a binding circle. The fools. 

He kept their cash and any identifying materials. At some point he would have to look up any relatives, and make sure demonic interests didn’t run in the family.

After sending a text to Cordelia, he drove southeast, down the I-10. 

Even in the desert, the night air was cool on his skin where it wasn’t covered by jacket or helmet. A little over an hour south of the city, the highway turned east through a range of hills like a crumpled brown blanket. Away from the river, the land was barren, empty, and the sky spread above him shining with more stars than he’d ever seen. He was still shaking, just a little, with adrenaline, and his eyes were more on the stars than the road, which was straight and empty for miles before him. Not a light to be seen, like the world had emptied out and it was just him and the stars and his shaking hands on the rumbling bike all vibrating him to pieces.

He needed this time away. He needed to reconcile who he’d become (would become) with who he had been. Could he live with Fred, knowing that she’d been his, and then lost, and then monstrously his again? Could he live with Charles, remembering how easy it would be to lose the man’s love, and friendship, and claims of family? Or Angel? Even now, the image of the pillow lowering to his face filled him with a panicky, hollow feeling, and that image continually intruded upon his thoughts whenever he was still, or engaged in some task that didn’t require much thought. 

Driving, like this, on an empty road on a clear night, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. If he did the wrong thing, Angel would try to kill him. Even if he did the right thing, Angel wouldn’t think twice about wiping his memory and replacing him with a more convenient, amenable version of himself if someone more important were at stake.

Wesley was almost surprised it hadn’t already happened – a word in Giles’ ear before he’d stabilized Wes’s memories, and Wesley-of-now would have never left that hotel. It would have been so easy to return Wesley-who-was, the Wesley who had trusted Angel so absolutely, the Wesley who would have died for them and killed for them. The Wesley who had never done anything so wrong it couldn’t be forgiven. 

But god he missed them. A part of him wished Angel had forced Giles to return the Wesley he knew. Wouldn’t it be easier to forget? To be so sure of their love? 

And he could still have that love, he knew. He could return at any time, and pretend, and they would look past his rough edges because they didn’t remember Wesley’s inability to tell the right thing from betrayal. 

That was the real question he had to answer on this trip. Could he live with the memory of his own mistakes?


	9. Now On My Trail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wes's further road trip adventures.

It seemed like the jagged, bare hills went on forever. Every half hour or so he would drive past a small town, wonder about the small lives lived there, but otherwise it was like being on the surface of the moon. As the adrenaline faded, and his hands grew steadier, Wesley began to feel the weight of exhaustion crushing down on him. Even the ever-present regret started to feel further away.

As he was coming out of the foothills, he began to see signs, some of them battered, one perforated with bullet holes, warning that the next place to stop for gas would be fifty miles down the highway. It was hard to imagine places being so far apart. He heeded the warning, and gassed up in a tiny little postage stamp of a town built in a perfectly square grid, almost lost in the midst of green fields that seemed endless. The amount of green was almost strange after his hours in the brown mountains, and as soon as he got out of range of industrial agriculture the landscape became sere, any visible vegetation withered and dry, and the horizon flattened out, somehow making the sky seem even bigger. 

It was very late, or very early depending on your perspective, and the darkness felt very close in spite of the endless open sky. He was very aware of being alone under that sky, and couldn’t help thinking about the hotel. The way he’d been in the hotel, and what he’d become after. He’d read a study once that suggested people change based on the company they keep; that one’s personality literally altered in different social settings. He’d become a more social person in that hotel, had grown comfortable and secure there. He’d felt trusted.

What does that adjective even mean, ‘social’? A stabilized set of affairs, a bundle of ties that, later, may be mobilized to account for some other phenomenon. And when it turned out not to be stable … There is nothing wrong with this use of the word as long as it designates what is already assembled together, without making any superfluous assumption about the nature of what is assembled. A team. Friends. Family? Problems arise, however, when ‘social’ begins to mean a type of material, as if the adjective was roughly comparable to other terms like ‘wooden,’ ‘steely,’ ‘mental,’ or ‘organizational.’ Could Wesley describe himself as a part of this assemblage? At that point, the meaning of the word breaks down since it now designates two entirely different things: first, a movement during a process of assembling; and second, a specific type of ingredient that is supposed to differ from other materials. Had he ever been a part of that family, if he had been cast out so easily…

Toward dawn he stopped for gas again in a slightly larger small town called Ozona. Down the street from the gas station was a small café, and a little further down was a tiny motel, the kind in which every room opened to a car park in the center. So he got a room, washed off some of the dust (and found spatters of blood on his jeans he was glad no one had noticed), and went back to the café for some breakfast. It was an odd little spot, with turquoise walls and red tables. He had eggs and toast and coffee, and went back to his cramped little room and in spite of the caffeine slept until it was dark again.

He woke feeling not exactly rested, but somewhat less utterly weary. His motel seemed to be in a rougher part of this small town – the surrounding buildings were all a bit run down: peeling paint, worn concrete facades. There wasn’t much traffic, and more than half of the streetlights were burned out. In the dark, everything looked slightly ominous. 

So he went on patrol.

Armed with stakes and a single handgun, he followed the main road for less than a block before finding a deeply shadowed alley. 

He was on a timeline. But a little more money couldn’t hurt.

In the third alley he found them. Two vampires draining a small woman in a corner where the few streetlights didn’t reach. The woman was already dead, or close to it. 

He didn’t speak, just used his shotgun to take the legs off one, then shot the other full in the chest. That wouldn’t kill it, he knew, but it would buy him some time.

The second had been knocked flat by the force of the shotgun blast. The first one was screaming horribly. He knelt beside it, and its arms flailed out, one clipping him across the brow. He ducked, but the blow sent his glasses spinning. Working more quickly now, he rummaged through its jacket pockets, pulling out a wallet and an antique pocket watch. The thing was spitting curses. He staked it, and stood as it burst into a cloud of dust.

The first one shrieked, pulling itself up, and Wesley shot it again, in the hip this time, spinning it around and he came up behind it and struck its head with the butt of the shotgun once, again. It fell. He moved to check its pockets. There was a sound behind him, and he turned.

Not fast enough. There had been a third. 

The blow sent him tumbling. The shotgun skittered out of his grasp, and he only stopped rolling when he hit the wall of the alley, hard. The third vampire was saying something. Wesley couldn’t make it out through the sudden ringing in his ears. He pushed himself up, drawing one of his handguns and firing as he moved. Without his glasses his aim was a little off, bullets crashing into the vamp’s chest and shoulder, barely slowing it down. He kept firing, letting the vampire think it was his only recourse.

It was laughing. For a moment he saw Angelus. The small woman crumpled against the wall became Faith, poisoned by his hand and then drained. A shudder went through him.

The moment he stopped firing the vamp was on him. Its large hands knocked the gun away and grasped his shoulders in a bruising grip, pulling him up, closer to its gaping mouth. 

It was so close he could smell the dust on it. He put a hand on its chest like he was trying to push it away, and triggered the stake up his sleeve.

The vampire looked shocked for a moment, then exploded into dust.

After it was over he climbed to his feet, coughing a little, flexing his wrist which was a little sore. When he’d stolen (borrowed) Angel’s sleeve rig, he hadn’t taken the relative sizes of their forearms into account. 

The second vampire was writhing on its back when he approached it on cautious feet. Its left arm had been blown off by one of the hits from the shotgun, and it was fountaining black blood that spread in a large pool around it. It wouldn’t heal without feeding, which made it more dangerous.

He pinned its remaining arm with one boot, and leaned down to fish a thick coin purse out of its pocket that felt oddly light. The creature was struggling, but he maintained his balance fairly easily, working open the zipper with his thumbnail to peer inside. It was stuffed full of folded bills. Satisfied, he took its head off, and leaned over stiffly to retrieve his glasses and his gun. 

The whole messy business had taken less than an hour. He could make it to the next town well before dawn.

He’d just started back toward the motel when his phone rang.

The sound made him jump, and he cursed himself, fumbling for the phone. He’d been hunting, it should have been on silent. 

“Why haven’t you called? Cordelia said your phone was working, we’ve missed you,” a voice with a very Texan accent babbled as soon as he flipped the phone open.

“Fred,” he sighed, and breathed out all the tension he’d been carrying. His body, so closed off and still, opened to her voice like petals at the first touch of light.

“Are you okay?” she began. “I mean, not that you wouldn’t be okay, but I was worried, well, we were all worried, and –”

“Fred, I’m fine,” Wesley said calmly. He wasn’t lying. He was a touch battered from the fight, but he’d had rather a lot worse.

“Well, good,” she said. There was a long silence that he wasn’t sure how to break. He listened to her breathing, and after a moment she said, “You are coming back, right?”

Her voice was tremulous. It made his heart clench in his chest and he almost gasped with the pain of it.

“Of course,” he said quickly, “of course I’m coming back. I just need to visit the collection of a magic user in Austin. It’s reputed to hold an extremely rare codex.” He thought for a moment. “I need to see it for myself. For another time,” he said carefully.

“Oh,” Fred said softly, then, “oh! You mean-”

“Yes,” he said, wincing at the lie. “I should have given everyone more detail before I left, I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Yeah you should have, mister,” she said in her best impression of Cordelia, giggling a little. “So it won’t take long? You’ll be back soon?”

“I just need a few more days,” he said, not knowing this time whether it was a lie or not. “A week at the most.”

“Good,” she said, her voice firm. “Or we’ll come looking.”

He wasn’t sure she meant it as a threat.

“You won’t have to do that,” he said, looking down. “I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon,” she said softly, and hung up.

He held the silent phone to his ear for a moment longer, pretending he could still hear her breaths. 

What would it take to make himself a part of that assemblage again? What would he have to change to keep from losing it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Philosophical ramblings taken from Bruno Latour’s _Reassembling the Social_.


	10. What Have You Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley's road trip reaches its first goal.

He traveled through the next few towns in this way, riding and hunting at night, sleeping through the hot days, taking longer than he really needed to. The highway dipped south at Junction, and the air smoothed out, carrying enough moisture to soften the wind from a harsh blast to a warm stream, the earth covered with more vegetation, greening steadily as he took the 290 further east. First grass, then trees, stretches of forest broken only by fields and small towns. There wasn’t a direct Interstate route to Austin without having to dip south through San Antonio. This way might be slower, but it was much more direct, and he spent the night in Johnson City so that he rode into Austin just after dawn.

The city was centered on the Colorado River, and it was green and lush compared to the desolate moonscape of west Texas. It was perhaps ten o’clock in the morning when he took 24th Street through the center of campus and found Knox in the Mallet Chemistry Library.

Jonathan P. Knox, having recently earned his PhD, was completing a post doc at the University of Texas, Austin, after which he would be recruited by Wolfram & Hart, after which he would set into motion a series of events that would empty Fred out and stuff her skin full of a primordial god king. 

Wesley was not going to let that happen.

Dressed in worn cargo pants, a checked flannel shirt over a cream-colored Henley, and scuffed Converse, Wesley could almost pass for a grad student. The battered backpack and glasses helped. He hadn’t had time to forge a student ID, but he managed to slip through with a small group of students. They were chattering about some project they had to finish, and didn’t notice him hanging onto the edges of their group. Once inside, he peeled off toward the stacks, and began searching.

Knox turned up in a study carrel on the second floor, near a back wall, where the air was still and hushed. When Wesley walked by the first time, Knox didn’t so much as twitch, buried as he was in twenty or so books and a fairly impressive new laptop, a bit battered but only an inch and a half thick. Wesley walked halfway down a row and paused in front of a book, running his fingers down the spine. He needed to think. None of his research had indicated that Knox came from money, but that laptop indicated funding beyond what the average post doc would receive. 

Perhaps he was already being courted by Wolfram & Hart. 

This made Wesley’s plan a touch more dangerous. 

He pulled out three books that looked related, moved down the row, took one more, then carried the small stack over to a carrel three down from where Knox was set up. Again, Knox didn’t notice anything beyond his own frantic reading and note-taking.

What could he be working on so frantically? Wesley wondered. Was this the beginning of his devotion to Illyria’s cult of followers or simply scientific research?

In his guise as a poor grad student, Wesley pulled a battered notebook out of his backpack, a cheap pen, and began pretending to take notes from the books he’d selected. Oh, he actually wrote things from those books in his notebook. He wasn’t a complete amateur at stake outs. 

The day passed with unbelievable slowness. Wesley was no stranger to long study sessions, but it was usually on a subject he was at least interested in. Knox stirred only twice for bathroom breaks, and once to sneak a cereal bar in a corner near the water fountains. Wesley casually followed him each time, spacing his own breaks so that he left and returned just after or just before the other man – it wasn’t too difficult to read each twitch and the way his knee would start to bounce up and down with increasing rapidity as he grew more anxious. Knox didn’t look his way on any of these occasions. 

As the sun went down, perceptible only by a dimming of the light let in by well-shaded windows (to protect the books), Knox began to pack up his things. Wesley left almost everything in place, including the notebook and backpack, heading toward the restroom again, as if he would be coming back. As Knox carried a stack of books to the front desk to check out, Wesley retrieved his things and slipped out the front doors of the library, concealing himself beneath the trees in front of Welch Hall. Knox came out a few moments later, and Wesley followed him to the small parking lot on Whitis, where he entered a beat up old Corolla and began to drive west.

Wesley had parked on 24th, not far at all, and jogged to his motorcycle in time to see Knox turn right on Guadalupe. Keeping a few cars between them, Wesley followed Knox north to a small house in Hyde Park. The neighborhood was quiet; old homes, older trees, a little run down. The house was near a small bakery, and he parked there and got a coffee and a muffin, and sat down to wait.

He didn’t draw much attention. Still dressed as a student, he blended in with the few other customers. He’d brought a paperback crime thriller and settled in a window, appearing to read for an hour or so. It was well after dark, now, and the bakery began to empty out. He read for a few moments longer, then moved his motorcycle down a block, parking in the lot of a shabby apartment complex.

The little neighborhood became quieter as it got later. Fewer cars, houses going dark for the night. Wesley moved easily through that darkness, approaching Knox’s little rental from the back. He was wearing gloves, clothing he would be able to discard, and a light scarf wrapped over the lower half of his face. He moved up the small porch and picked the lock on the back door.

Knox was still working, hunched over his laptop, eating noodles straight from a takeout container. Wesley hit him from behind, a single blow to the back of the head. Knox fell to one side, unconscious. The noodles spilled over the laptop’s keyboard and the desk. Wesley left him there, and checked the house. They were alone. 

Wesley dragged Knox into the bathroom. It was small, and the floors were linoleum. The bathtub was old cast iron with claw feet. Wesley tied Knox’s hands and feet securely and levered him into the tub.

Knox came awake as Wesley turned the righthand tap and cold water splashed across his legs and feet. The blow to the head had disoriented him badly. His eyes were rolling. He tried to move his legs and when he found he couldn’t he began to babble half-formed questions. “Wha? What is thi, who are you? What?”

“No one you need be concerned about,” he said calmly, screwing a silencer onto the barrel of his gun.

Knox’s eyes became very wide. “Oh my god, oh my god, what do you want?”

He continued in that vein for a little while. Wesley didn’t answer, just waiting for the tub to fill. The gun was heavy in his hands, and the gloves made it a little hard to feel the trigger.

“I could give you money, please,” Knox was saying. Wesley judged that the water was high enough to cover the body, and closed the tap. “Or women, or drugs? Please, I know some very powerful people, you could have anything.” Knox was crying now. Wesley felt a grim thrill of confirmation. He’d been right. Wolfram & Hart was already involved.

Other than Knox’s begging, and a few drips from the leaky tap, the little house was very quiet. Wesley went back to Knox’s computer and found the younger man’s music files. Picking something with a lot of bass, he clicked on the file and turned the laptop’s speakers all the way up.

Knox had tried to wiggle out of the tub; when Wesley got back to the bathroom the floor was wet, and the surface of the water in the tub was still sloshing. Wesley sat on the edge of the tub. Knox looked up at him, not even trying to speak now, and Wesley shot him three times in the chest and once in the head.

Even with the silencer and the music, the shots had been loud. Wesley shook his head, trying to get the sudden ringing out of his ears. After a moment it seemed better, and he looked down at what he’d done.

Knox’s eyes had widened in fear as he’d seen the gun come up over the edge of the tub. He’d died so quickly that his eyes still retained their shocked appearance. Wesley didn’t bother trying to close the lids.

After a few minutes he turned off the music and retrieved every tray of ice in the freezer. The cubes fell around Knox’s body with a light splashing sound, stirring the red water. Wesley looked down at the ruined body. 

He didn’t feel anything.

He wanted to feel successful. Or relieved. He’d saved Fred. He wouldn’t lose Fred.

He felt nothing.

Turning the air conditioning to its lowest setting, Wesley then packed up the laptop and any hand written notes that he could find. They could have been chemistry, never his strongest subject, but they could also have been occult research written in code. He found Knox’s wallet on a small table by the front door next to a key chain, and took both. He turned out most of the lights, leaving a single lamp in the bedroom, and slipped out the back door.

It was done. Fred was safe from this threat.

His breathing was a little fast. He couldn’t think why – he was jogging slowly toward his bike. The laptop wasn’t particularly heavy. But he couldn’t slow his breathing.

His motorcycle was where he’d left it, and he packed away the notes and the laptop, put on his helmet, and rode north.

There was hardly any traffic. Austin appeared to be the kind of city that shut down after dark, like York or the City in London. L.A. had been busy at all hours, in some areas. Usually downtown. There were other parts of the city where the residents knew to stay behind locked doors after dark. Wesley wondered how many cities retained this old knowledge, this old fear. And how many of them knew why they feared the dark.

The closely packed streets gave way to stretches of green, smaller closed-off neighborhood and suburbs of nearly identical houses getting further apart and finally giving way to seemingly endless stretches of grass dotted with just a few trees, and after a time no trees. He passed just a few cars every few minutes, then a few every hour, then almost none as the moon rose and the night deepened. As he went further north, the land flattened, and became bare, just the tall grass in shades of pale green and brown rippling beneath the bright moon. 

He crossed the border into Oklahoma a little before dawn. He’d driven straight through the night, and after the long stakeout of the day before his head was swimming with exhaustion. He came across a dip in the land, almost like a long ditch but it also seemed like a natural feature of the landscape. He stopped there, and sheltered from sightlines built a very small fire, and burned everything he’d worn into Knox’s house, including the shoes and the light scarf.

The smoke, which would have been solid gray against the night sky, and bright white once the sun came up, blended gently with the gray pre-dawn light. The small pile of things took very little time to burn completely. He watched each item as it was consumed by the fire. His hands were shaking just a little.

As the sun rose fully, it was done. Wesley dressed in his jeans and leather jacket, his heavy leather motorcycle boots, and kicked out the fire, stomping any remnants into the dirt.

A few miles later he crossed a small river, the first body of water of any size he’d seen since Austin. Traffic had picked up a little, and he feigned engine trouble, waving off any cars that slowed to help, until the road was clear in both directions and then disassembled the gun and threw the parts into the water. 

That was the last bit. It was done. Fred must be safe.

He wondered why that didn’t make him feel any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Knox doesn’t appear to have a first name that I can find, so the one I came up with is based on the actor’s.  
> All research on the University of Texas, Austin was done using Google Maps, so. Don’t expect super accuracy.  
> I’m slightly fuzzy on accurate tech from the early 00s, so if you notice anything egregiously wrong let me know.


	11. Made A Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We check in with Angel and the gang, who are dealing with some changes of their own, and Wes and Angel have a chance to talk, but not without further misunderstandings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you might have noticed that I’m playing a little fast and loose with the timeline from the show (time travel, yay?), but, um, yeah, I needed Wes to be on top of the prophecy before “Birthday,” so Groo hasn’t returned yet, Fred and Gunn aren’t together, etc. But “Billy” has happened, Wes is the only one confused about that. ;) So this is sometime after “Dad,” when things have settled down, but before “Birthday,” and includes elements from “Waiting in the Wings.” I don’t understand how ballet touring works, so just pretend with me that they handled that case a little earlier than in canon.

They somehow didn’t manage to actually celebrate Cordelia’s twenty-first birthday until after Wesley had already left. 

Watching their friend drive away, Angel appeared to be deep in thought. Cordelia was comforting him, and so Lorne turned to the man responsible for this decision and said, “I’m moving in tomorrow.”

“Wait, what?” Gunn demanded.

“Ever since your friends trashed my club, and then your other friends blew up my remodel, I’ve been couch-surfing and staying in hotels, and the way I see it, if you’re going to keep asking for my help I might as well stay in this hotel. For free.”

“That second group wasn’t our friends,” Gunn objected.

“He does have a point,” Fred said, timidly.

“I don’t think it’s up to me,” Gunn said, sighing. 

“So who’s buying my cake?” Cordelia said brightly, walking over with Connor bouncing lightly in her arms.

“Your what now?” Gunn looked aggrieved. 

“My birthday cake.” Cordelia was smiling, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t upset. “We never did celebrate, with all the fuss, and we could use a celebration right now.”

“Without Wesley?” Fred asked, her eyes very big.

“He wasn’t in the mood to celebrate anything, cupcake,” Lorne told her.

“We should,” Angel said, joining them. “We do need a celebration.” He thought for a moment. “How do you guys feel about the ballet?”

Cordelia smiled for a moment, but the expression froze, and she raised one finger as if in request. “Do we have a case that involves ballet?”

Angel shrugged, looking just a little sheepish. “We have a case that involves ballet.”

She squinted her eyes at him, then smiled again, a sharkish grin. “Then I’ll need a new dress.” She turned to Fred. “We can go shopping!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Fred began, twisting her fingers together. “I don’t really have any money…”

“Oh that’s okay,” Cordelia said, still wearing that hard grin. “Angel’s paying.”

“He is?” Fred asked, amazed.

“He is?” Angel asked, mouth slanting to one side.

“Birthday,” Cordelia sang, and Angel’s heart sank.

“He is,” he said, and sighed. 

Cordelia whooped, waking Connor, and danced over to Angel. He dug out his wallet and went to pull out some cash. She handed over the baby, took the wallet, grabbed Fred’s hands, and dashed out the front door into the sunshine.

“We’ll be back late!” she said, and the words drifted back into the lobby as if from a far away place.

“That girl’s like a force of nature,” Gunn said slowly, Lorne looking slightly stunned but nodding along.

“Yeah,” Angel said, cradling his son, still looking at his hand which had held his wallet. He hadn’t let her take it. She’d genuinely been strong enough to wrest it from his hand.

Of course, he hadn’t been trying to hold onto it, particularly. But he didn’t remember Doyle being that strong.

He thought about calling Giles, winced, decided to try calling Wes.

Whatever he was doing, surely he wouldn’t refuse to help if Angel had a real question. Would he?

* * *

Wesley had stopped for the night in St. Louis (technically in a small motel just south of St. Louis in a town apparently known for its apple orchard), and was sleeping off the hunt of the night before when his cell phone, silent since Arizona, rang.

He fumbled up out of a restless sleep to the sharp ringing, grabbing the phone and prying it open before he managed to open his eyes, and slapped it to his ear so he could let his head fall back onto the pillow.

“Hello?” he rasped.

“Wes?”

It wasn’t Cordelia.

Wesley thought about sitting up, facing this more upright if not on his feet. 

But at the same time, Angel’s voice sent a sense of lassitude through his already exhausted limbs. It had been a tough hunt, three vampires and a Lychen demon (all tongues and slime, unfortunately), and part of him, albeit a small part, still associated Angel’s voice with comfort and safety.

“Angel,” he said, voice soft and slow.

“Um, are you okay?” Angel sounded very uncertain, even through the phone’s tinny reception.

“I’m quite fine,” Wesley assured him. “Is that why you called?”

“No, I, um, I had a question.”

Wesley smiled, stretching against the pull of the motel’s scratchy sheets. “Ask away.”

“Oh, well, it’s about Cordelia.”

The delicious, languorous sense of exhaustion melted away, and Wesley was left just feeling tired.

“Yes, of course,” he said quickly. “What was it you needed to know?”

“Well, she’s doing fine, I should have said that first.” If anything, Angel’s nervousness seemed to worsen, and Wesley began to worry. “But she’s been, I’m not complaining, it’s just she’s, well, very strong, now.”

Oh god, Wesley thought. I’m going to have to talk him through sex with a powerful woman.

There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world.

Some mean part of him authored the next words: “How is this any different from Buffy?”

He wanted to swallow them back immediately, but it was too late.

Angel didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did, he seemed confused. “Well, Buffy was a Slayer, so I wasn’t worried about her strength.”

Wesley began to think he might have misunderstood something. 

“What do you mean exactly, strong?” he asked, sitting up and reaching for his glasses out of habit, scrabbling a little when they didn’t materialize beneath his fingers before he remembered. (As soon as he had enough money together for Lasik, he’d throw them in the nearest dumpster.)

“We’ve been training,” Angel began, “and she, well, she seems stronger than I remember Doyle being.”

“Oh,” Wesley managed. That was different. “That might be a concern.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Angel said, actually sounding a bit brighter, as if confirmation that he should be worried was actually comforting. “Do you think something went wrong with the spell?”

Wesley thought for a moment. “I wasn’t conscious for part of it, of course,” he said slowly.

“Right, of course,” Angel said quickly. “But if you noticed something, or could think of something that might have gone sideways …”

“Have you talked to Giles?”

“Ah, not yet.”

Wesley wasn’t sure what to say at that point. The silence must have dragged on for too long, because Angel cleared his throat, the sort of unnecessary, theatrical gesture he enjoyed, and said, “Well, we have a case.” He said it leadingly, and Wesley stifled a sigh.

“Tell me about it.”

“You must remember this one, a haunted theater?”

The ballet.

Wesley closed his eyes. Gunn would have a revelation, forced into the perspective of the start-crossed lover, and he and Fred would be a couple, and that was the end of it.

“It’s the ballet troupe, actually,” he managed. His voice was a little rough, but he thought the poor reception over the cell phone would disguise it. 

“Really? How does the troupe itself get haunted? I thought that kind of thing had to be tied to an object or a place.”

“It’s a little complicated,” Wesley said faintly. “Let me send Cordelia the details. The resolution isn’t too difficult.”

“Oh.” Angel sounded a bit downcast. “You could tell me now?”

“Later, I promise,” Wesley said. He had to get off the phone. “It’s rather a lot, it will be better if I write it down.”

“Um, sure, Wes.” Silence for a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” he gasped. “I’ll talk to you later.” Before Angel could respond he closed the phone with a sharp click.

And held it to his chest for a moment, in both hands, squeezing the phone in a sudden wave of sorrow.

He would be fine. Everything would be fine.

His breath was coming too quickly. He tried to force it to slow down.

He would be happy for his friends. Charles and Fred would fall in love, and without the stress of his betrayal and Angel’s absence, they would stay in love. Angel and Cordy would find each other, and since she would never ascend, they would stay together. He would be happy for them, and he would not let them see his heart. He would be fine.

Oh god. 

He pushed himself upright. It would be light in a few hours.

More than enough time to go kill something.

* * *

Angel hung up with a distinct sense of disappointment. He hadn’t cleared up anything about Cordelia’s condition, except for the suggestion of contacting Giles, which he’d already known he needed to do. But he was still uncomfortable around Giles, even after all this time. Torture a guy as Angelus once, and things stay awkward. And on top of that, the case he’d thought might be a simple distraction or a bit of fun turned out to be “rather a lot.”

Angel had hoped that Wes had left for a good reason, that he would get his head on straight and come back to them, back to him. 

And now Wesley wouldn’t even talk to him.

Gunn wandered back in then, carrying his favorite crossbow. “Those girls are going to drain you dry.”

“Vampire humor,” Angel said glumly. “Nice.”

Gunn chuckled. “But really, man, I don’t know what to wear to the ballet. I don’t even like ballet.”

“Oh, you’ve been to the ballet?”

“No, that’s why I don’t like it.”

“That does make any sense.” Angel shook his head. “Anyway, you wear a tuxedo.”

“Do I look like I have a tux?” Gunn asked, rolling his eyes.

Angel sighed. He didn’t need to, of course, but sometimes it was damned satisfying. “Shopping?”

Gunn smiled broadly. “Shopping.” It was a mean smile, and Angel realized that Gunn was more excited about spending his money than about actual shopping.

It was probably just as well. If Gunn were genuinely enthusiastic about a shopping trip, Angel would have to suspect possession.

“We don’t have time for anything bespoke,” Angel said, heading for the door. 

Gunn tossed the crossbow to the round sofa. “I have no idea what that means,” he said, and followed.

* * *

It had been a bad year for possessions, Angel thought later.

Angel had been forcibly body-swapped with a pervy old man, Wes had been taken over by the rage of the bastard Angel had rescued from hell, and now they’d all been possessed by ballet ghosts, or something. 

Fred and Gunn had changed around each other. Angel thought they might be flirting, as they all wandered back into the Hyperion’s lobby. He looked over to Cordy, and she was watching them with a soft look on her face.

He thought about the moments they had shared, and frowned. Sometimes it seemed like Cordy might feel something for him. But sometimes she seemed distant, or angry, and he loved her, he loved all of them like family. He could see a future with her, sometimes. For a while.

The thought of it made him a little sad. 

He’d waited too long to say anything to Wes. That was still raw. And he was seeing Cordy a little differently these days – less someone he had to protect, more someone he could fall in love with. 

But he needed to talk to Wes. They’d talked so little, and Angel still didn’t understand everything about this future that wouldn’t happen, or why Wes wouldn’t, or couldn’t, start a relationship with him anymore. He just needed to understand before he could move on.

They entered the lobby together, and Lorne, who had been watching Connor, approached them with a strange look on his face, and Angel felt a sudden touch of worry, and he looked behind Lorne and a figure came out of Wes’s office and Cordy squealed and ran past him—

Into Groo’s arms. 

The Groosalugg, champion of another dimension that had crowned Cordelia its princess within her first twenty-four hours of arriving. 

“Groo!”

And she was thrilled. Well, Angel thought, why shouldn’t she be. Groo had always treated her like a princess, even before she’d been one.

Angel smiled in welcome, shaking the man’s, well, half-demon’s, hand.

Maybe this could be good for them.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles taken from Jeff Buckley’s “Eternal Life”  
> Wes!patter taken partly from W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. in his essay “The Structure of the Concrete Universal,” Don DeLillo’s _Underworld_ , and Cathy Caruth’s _Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History_. Illyria’s speech is mostly taken from Satan’s first monologue in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ , around line 84 on.


End file.
